Establish a Chicano identity: Casares' Brownsville Stories

Résumé du document

Casares's Brownsville Stories is not just a novel. Instead of following one protagonist through a long series of events, the text presents the reader with a series of vignettes about multiple protagonists. Casares situates all of his anecdotes in the small Texas town of Brownsville, yet the town, in itself, has a minimal presence in the novel. Rather, the story focuses more on short narrations of small incidents in the lives of the characters. However, as a piece of Chicano literature, it is necessary to read Casares's text not only in a literal form, but to also read the text for the qualities of the Chicano movement. If the city of Brownsville is not important as a direct key player in the text, then why is it so necessarily the unifying setting of the short stories?

Extraits

[...] In the end, she strikes the delinquent kid back with her bowling ball, providing the only triumphant ending in the novella. Casares asserts that while some change is necessary, Hispanic peoples must fight back against the complete erasure of their heritage. In the protagonist does indeed get his hammer returned to him in the end of the story. However, it is given to him as a gift, and he expresses that he “felt strange to be thanking him for something that was really mine” (38). [...]

[...] Yet, Casares questions this notion. RG lends his white neighbor his hammer, yet it is never returned. There are senses that if the Chicano does give in to white society, they might give away something that will never get back. Yet others in the stories adhere strictly to their old ways. “Yolanda”s narrator expresses, however, that he was happier before his dad bars on the window” and a “fence in the front”, actions that symbolize a seclusion from white society. [...]

[...] How much should the Chicano assimilate? How much will be lost in this transition? Where is the balance between white culture and their tradition? Casares', through his stories, voices the feelings of the Chicano people about white society and their loss of traditional identity at the same as discussing the negativity of remaining unchanged in a progressive society. There is dispute on whether to herald or escape the American, white society. In the wife glorifies white society. The protagonist expresses that his wife defends people “especially if they happen to have blue eyes” and that, when a few Anglo families lived in their neighborhood, she felt that it was like “living at the country club” (27). [...]

[...] Casares thus examines the the fence' position of the Chicano peoples and calls for maintenance of some heritage in the face a white society that may try to define their place for them. In finding identity, the Chicano should not remain so traditional as to isolate them from new society and thus limit opportunity, yet they should not change so much as to leave behind all cultural identifiers. Casares' Brownsville is not a simple collection of anecdotes, but a larger commentary on the contemporary issues of the growing Chicano population in the U.S. [...]

[...] Jesse, another one of Casares' characters, is also separated from his family. Interestingly enough, Jesse's child is handicapped. This literal handicap is indicative of the limited mobility that the Chicano has in a culture in which he does not fit. He is different and unable to interact with the society around him, much like the English illiterate Domingo. Jesse tries to hide the difference of his family; didn't want people to know tier baby wasn't like a regular baby” (106). [...]