Thankfully my hotel in NYC gave me an umbrella for my taxi ride to NYU and then again as I headed to Penn Station. Getting there when there was a hole in the schedule of trains north, I had a quick lunch and headed to the bookstore. I found a book that I thought would be a variation on Sherman Alexie's stories about life on the "rez." I bought The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez.
Domingo was raised in the barrio of Brownsville in a family of five children, two girls and three boys were he was the middle on. Domingo wrote this memoir as psychiatric therapy to heal from the traumas and temptations of his youth and young adulthood. His family is comic and horribly tragic: an abusive father in a culture that fosters that behavior; a grandmother who blends Catholicism with voodoo like talismans who may have contributed to the death of her philandering husband; sisters who assume Valley girl personas to overcome their heritage; a brawling older brother and an emotionally fragile brother who falls into addiction.
How depressing, how well written and insightful, how Texan. As with the rest of my reading habits this summer, I got Domingo's sequel My Heart is a Drunken Compass. Here Domingo's life in Seattle where he moved to get away from Texas. Like other male members of his family, he falls completely into alcohol and drug coupled with absolutely horrible choices in girlfriends, It is a difficult story to read. A talented writer who hopefully will venture into fiction
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