Domingo Martinez

This is a memoir of growing up in Brownsville Texas, near the border with Mexico, in a poor barrio, with few opportunities and even less hope.

There are parts of this memoir that are engaging and funny. I loved the story of slaughtering the pig to make the Christmas tamales, or his sisters dying their hair blonde, and trying to transform themselves into “white” teenagers. But I could not connect with the acting out that the boys engaged in – the fighting, drinking, and drugs.

By way of background, I grew up in a Mexican-American household, with a father who was born in Mexico, and a mother who was born in a border-town on the Texas side of the Rio Grande – the same town where I was born and where my grandparents and most of my aunts and uncles stayed to raise their families. I recognized some of the setting, traditions, and cultural mores Martinez relates. But on the whole I felt as disenfranchised from the experiences he relates, as he states he felt. The families I knew were cohesive; the parents working menial jobs, perhaps, but staying together in love and faith to raise children who would succeed.

I kept waiting for some insight, and never got it. I wanted to understand this all-consuming need to express machismo, but could only shake my head and think “not again!” So I’m left disappointed and dissatisfied. I felt I was reading the rambling notes of a journal his therapist suggested he keep, rather than a cohesive memoir.… (mais)