Kevin A. González, “The Jayuya Uprising” (American Short Fiction, Spring 2018)
Kevin A. González, “The Jayuya Uprising” (American Short Fiction 66 Spring 2018, pp. 81–129)
I couldn’t stop reading the
fifty-page novella “The Jayuya Uprising,” by Kevin A. González, published in American Short Fiction 66. (I recently
reviewed a masterful flash fiction piece from the same number of ASF.) Back in 2009, I reviewed a story
by González: “Lotería.”
I liked it and looked forward to reading more of González’s fiction. I hadn’t
bumped into any since then, though, until “The Jayuya Uprising.”
The story centers around a
Catholic, school-mandated retreat in Jayuya. This is a town perched in the
mountainous center of Puerto Rico. The narrator brings out the town’s nationalist
credentials constantly, remembering the 1950 insurrection led by Blanca Canales
("the first and only woman to lead an armed revolt against the United
States" [p. 83]).
The narrator is Héctor
Manual Acosta (the third, since his father and his grandfather bear the same
name) (p. 125). His nemesis is Picky Perelló, a dissolute, cocky,
Porsche-driving teenager from a wealthy family. He is the son of a statehood
senator and, as the narrator reminds us as often enough as it hurts him to
think about it, he has a large penis. (His name is eerily similar to that of
the current governor of Puerto Rico, Ricky Rosselló.)
The narrator is in love
with Camille, the daughter of a history teacher at the pricy San José school where
both the narrator and Picky go to school. Camille is also the daughter of
Pucho, a rugged man who trains fight dogs. There is a long scene in which the
narrator accompanies Pucho to a dog fight to witness Pucho’s champion, Bazooka,
clash against a dog from New Orleans. There are nationalist undertones around
this fight, down to Bazooka entering the scene wearing the flag of Puerto Rico.
The strongest quality of “The
Jayuya Uprising” is its pace. It speeds along, stoked by the cauldron of the
narrator’s hormones and multiple levels of troubles. Héctor’s life at home is
troubled: his parents got divorced and his father gave up his law practice, which
led the narrator’s paternal grandfather to disinherit his own son a few days
before he died—in favor of the narrator. Inheriting his grandfather’s fortune
leads the narrator’s father to stop talking to him.
Héctor’s school life is
also troubled: his beloved Camille is now dating his nemesis, Picky. And he has
a life’s worth of resentments built up around him: people he can’t talk to,
people who avoid him. His one close friend is bound to him by a common interest
in drugs.
The retreat is spiritual
and fond of confession and moments of introspection. Héctor hates it and uses
every opportunity to mock what people are doing and, as he sees it, the
silliness of their beliefs. Some quips are funny, such as describing the Virgin
Mary’s outstretched hands as a card dealer’s hands. But what loses out in the
end is not religion, but Héctor’s rabid take on religion. We see that Héctor’s
own problems keep him from participating in experiences that others do find
transformative and that the brothers who run the retreat are genuinely committed
to.
All in all, worth reading. Now
comes the part that threw me off throughout the piece: the handling of Spanish.
I’ve commented on this before,
since this is a problem in every Junot Díaz story I’ve read. How do English
speakers who lack Spanish deal with passages like these?
— “I wanted to pat my
pockets and feed him the same line I’d feed a tecato panhandling at a traffic
light. Mala mía, pai. Estoy pelao” (p. 109).
— “Outside the ring, arms
were flailing all around; everyone was screaming que si coño y puñeta y dale maricón”
(p. 114).
Are readers meant to assume
that something relevant has been said, trust the author, and keep reading? Say
you want to make an effort and look up the unknown words in a dictionary: “pai”
is certainly not in any major dictionary. And getting the sense goes beyond the
dictionary, especially with this kind of regional slang.
Not only that, but the
copyediting, which has done a good job in English in the novella as a whole, misses
key things in the snippets of Spanish slipped into the story: leaving aside the
opening question and exclamation marks, which are required in Spanish, accent
marks are just off. Take “Tu puedes mucho más!” (p. 87): the first word there
should be “Tú.” And “Dále” and “Dáme” (p. 91) are never written with an accent.
The same goes for “títeritos” (p. 127).
Why bother with this kind
of Spanish at all? Why not curse in English, instead of littering the text with
“coño” and “puñeta” and “cabrón” (e.g., p. 104)? The real bold move would be to
have the dialogues in Spanish, but that would lose a lot of readers along the
way. I’ve said before that if, say, Tagalog were interspersed in a story as
much as Spanish is in this novella or in Junot Díaz’s stories, I would probably
lose interest quickly.
Having said that, “The
Jayuya Uprising” is decisively readable and it spools you into the emotions and
struggles of the narrator. I’ll close with this take on Puerto Rico, which
stands out in the narrative: “And this is the thing about our island: You leave
your private school, you leave your gated complex, you take a right at the
McDonald’s, go six blocks, take another right at the McDonald’s, and all of a
sudden, you’re in a different island. At your house, the sprinklers sweep the
lawn, discharging water like toy guns, but here,
you can turn the faucet all day long and all you get is a callus on
your thumb. Here, there are dogs being trained to fight on rooftops, there are
fathers tugging leashes and mothers wearing blindfolds and daughters whose milk
is coming in” (p. 94).
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