Rigoberto GonzalezCritiques

I picked this up on a whim at work and am surprised by how good it is. The memoir is beautifully written and appropriately raw, and my heart goes out to the author. It reminded me of the need for queer stories of color and made me miss my Mexican extended family. I just want to give the author a big hug. Just overall—good.

There are a few reasons I like this book. First, I like how the book is bilingual and offers the text in Spanish and English since the young boy in the story is bilingual. This is very educational and can help extend students vocabulary in another language. Second, I like that the characters are believable. The characters are two mothers and a son which is present in todays society. Having a non-traditional family is common and okay. Also, the strange appearance of his mothers partner’s character is very unique to the story. Third, I like how the book pushes readers to think about the tough issues of differences in individuals and how to be polite, respectful and include everyone. The message to take away from this story is that we must be respectful to everyone even if their family isn’t the same as ours.

I think this book is great. I like that the author translated the book into Spanish and English. When reading the book, on one page was the words in English and the other page they were in Spanish, which can be helpful for ELL students. Another reason why I like this book is because of the plot. The book addresses a situation that is very realistic, a young girl being alone due to her family working. Although Soledad is alone at her apartment after school, she checks in with her neighbor, which shows responsibility. The big idea of this book is that it is okay to be alone because you can still have fun while being alone.

I enjoyed this book very much. I love that it is in Spanish and English and tells a very real story for some first-generation children. The dialogue and language between the characters is very fitting for the story and setting, which I enjoyed. The illustrations are beautiful and vibrant. There didn’t seem to be a moral or plot, but it shows a little girls friends lively ingenuity in consoling her loneliness. They say things like, “My house is so busy, there are times I’d love to listen to music all by myself” (page 20). The little girl, Soledad, dreads coming home from school every day because her parents work all day and night. She gets home from school and checks in with her neighbor before heading inside her empty apartment, heating up her rice and beans in the microwave, doing her homework, taking a shower and brushing her teeth before reading all alone. Most days, she falls asleep on the couch and is woken up by her mother the next morning to get ready for school. But one day, she has her friends Nedelsy and Jahniza come over after school and they play, dance, read, and Soledad isn’t alone in the apartment. They then must go, which makes Soledad very sad, but she gets the best surprise when she seems her mother come through the door early as her friends leave.

Rigoberto Gonzalez writes for the missing, the dead, the mourning, the lost and about unspeakable loss. He give s voice to the voiceless, wives without husbands, sons without fathers. The poetry is beautiful in many places. Modern Central American interweaves with the mythical Aztec realm of th dead. Language warps to fit the damage and destruction. Whole villages are ghost towns filled with memory.

So much poetry today is topicless solipsism. Unpeopled Eden studies murder, the drug trade, and the destructive effects of emigration to North American in oblique but vivid ways. Gonzalez's collection forces us to see hard realities without ever becoming polemical.

Antonio loves Leslie, his mother's partner, but is embarrassed when the kids make fun of how tall she is and how she looks like a clown in her paint-spattered overalls. When she meets him after school he hurries her off the school grounds so they can go elsewhere to read under a tree. For Mother's Day, the kids all make cards but when the teacher announces they will be displayed, Antonio fears more teasing. Then he sees the painting Leslie has made for his mother, of the three of them reading under a tree. He realizes Leslie is a part of the family and that is nothing to be embarrassed about.

Good for ELL students, good for students to learn about other family/home situations, and has Spanish and English text.

I liked the book Antonio's Card for two reasons. I liked how the author includes imagery so that the reader can visualize the situation. For example, the author writes, "The tallest person coming down the street is Leslie, looking like a splattered canvas in her workshop overalls." The reader can see Leslie's head above the others and her paint-splattered overalls. I also liked the conflict of the story because it is relatable. When Leslie approaches Antonio to pick him up, the children start making fun of Leslie. The children say "That woman looks like a guy!" and "She looks like a rodeo clown." Antonio then has to decide whether to care about what the children say or not. The main message of the story is that we are all individuals and are different, and we should not be ashamed of being around someone who is more different than others. At first, Antonio is ashamed of being associated with Leslie because of the way she looks and acts, but through talking with his mother, he decides to disregard others’ opinions and bring Leslie to school with him in front of his peers.

I liked this book. I think that this book provided a huge window into the life of a child who has parents of the same sex. I thought that the characters in this story were extremely believable. I have members of my family who are homosexual so I can see why Antonio became embarrassed when his classmates were making fun of him. I also really liked the writing in this story. This book was a bilingual book, with English on one side of the page, and the Spanish translation on the other side of the page. I believe that the main idea of this story was to push the readers to accept all different kinds of people for who they are, not who they love.

2.5 stars. I expected more, tbh. I didn't really connect with any of the characters and, for the first time in my YA reading, the characters really felt very young (and not in a good way). I ended up skimming most of it.

the rating is not a reflection on Rigoberto, who is a fine poet, but my general lack of enthusiasm for most poetry.

Antonio loves to draw and spell, making a Mother's Day card at school for his mother and her partner, Leslie. After some of his schoolmates make fun of the way Leslie looks and dresses when she comes to meet him after school one day, Antonio feels self-conscious of his different family, afraid that his classmates will tease him about Leslie. The reader follows Antonio through his personal conflict and sees the elements that influence his decision whether or not to show off his family. The book is written in both Spanish and English, with the English generally at the top of the page and the Spanish at the bottom. Each two-page spread contains a page of painted picture and a page of text. Cecilia Alvarez illustrated the book using acrylic paint, and showed Antonio's emotions plainly through his expression. Recommended for purchase. Suitable for ages 6-10.

I’m always a little worried when I read a Young Adult / Coming of Age novel, since I really care for these young men and I don’t want anything bad to happen to them. That is maybe the reason why, most time than not, I check the last pages to be sure the above young men are all fine at the end of the novel. In The Mariposa Club it’s even more a chance since there are four of them: Lib, Trini, Isaac and Maui, the narrative voice. They are all 17 years old at their last year in high school and surprise, surprise, they are out at school and to their families, with different outcome but still out.

Lib apparently has no trouble at all, he has a loving family, good grades at school and probably a brilliant future in politics; Trini, more transgender than gay actually, is the one with the worst family background, basically his parents kicked him out and he is living with an old aunt; Isaac comes from a middle class family, his father has not really accepted him being gay, but he is coping, more or less; and finally Mauricio “Maui”, without mother but with, probably, the best of all above parent, a father that, even if he doesn’t understand his son, is always ready to support him, despite all.

Sure these foursome has not it easy at school, but all in all their story is the story of ordinary teenagers, with family trouble, school trouble, boyfriends trouble… their biggest problem is to find a way to be remember in the school yearbook and so they decide to establish the first LGBT club in their high school, The Mariposa Club. In their naiveté, since they need at least five members, they enlist Maddy, the “obvious” lesbian girl, that is not lesbian at all, but that will gladly help just for the fun to go against the system.

On a more personal level, Maui has a little crush on Isaac and some family issues to overcome: his older sister is going away to college and she asks to Maui to stay at home taking care of their father, when Maui’s biggest dream is to run away to college as soon as he graduates. Again, the feeling is of very typical teenager trouble, trouble that seem huge at that age, but that actually are nothing in an older perspective. It was refreshing, for once, to read of gay guys that can live their teen year more or less undisturbed, dreaming of boyfriends and of the wonderful future attending them; sure some of them feel trapped, some of them will try to shorten the way, but in the end, all of them will find their way towards those dreams.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1590213505/?tag=elimyrevandra-20

The subjects of the stories of Men Without Bliss are postponing satisfaction for a better year.
Half of them are gay and half are straight, but there are almost no committed relationships of equals here. Most work jobs which lack meaning, or at least different jobs than they once saw themselves doing for a living. Homosexual characters are accepted by some families, but are the object of shame in others. Yet other families pretend they’ve never noticed, and say nothing.
Stymied Chicano characters in their twenties or thirties act out of obligation to parents who are aging, failing, distant, deluded or dying. The young men aren’t even liberated when overbearing parents pass on, as illustrated in “Malicious Moons”: “...your mother--dead four years and still you carry her coffin on your shoulders.” The bonds between adult siblings aren’t gone but they wither under strain. One of the most beguiling stories, “Good Boys,” features brothers named after The Three Wise Men, whose behavior has coworkers re-labeling them as Three Stooges instead. Gaspar is a cruel-hearted looker, Balthazar tries to buck his status as a confirmed mama’s boy and the happy-go-lucky Melchor is almost as good at diffusing trouble with humor as he is at burglarizing the mansions around Caliente Valley. More than half of the stories are set in this fictional area, which seems to be near the southern end of California’s Central Valley.
“Cactus Flower” projects a very different aura. It is a sort of gothic meditation of a farm laborer who lives with a lovely ghost for company in the desert. González draws on a reserve of fantastic lyricism describing how the ghost became one: “She said she was going to leave him, she said she was going to let their world collapse. So he didn’t let her leave, not entirely, taking her neck in his hands and widening her mouth until she burst into the air like a puff of dandelion seeds, an explosion of stars in the sky, an outbreak of marigolds. Such beautiful flowers.”
A couple stories show less emotional investment, but there is no questioning the care for craft exhibited throughout this collection. One which is clearly a third-person story takes up affected second person language (e.g.: then you did this, after which you did that). The style doesn’t fly; it elicits a contrarian response from those who may wish to point out that they do not perform the protagonists’ actions themselves.
González serves on the Board of Directors for the National Book Critics Circle and is a contributing editor to Poets and Writers. His novel, Crossing Vines won the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award for Fiction in 2003. Men Without Bliss is thirteen angles on dreams deferred, on desire that goes unserviced, on potential of undetermined outcomes. This kind of writing connects the particular with the universal, it holds an undeniable draw.

by Todd Mercer

Copyright ForeWord Magazine, volume 12, no. 1

Anthony is very happy with his mami and her partner, Leslie, but he feels ashamed when kids at school make fun of Leslie’s appearance and must learn to value the good things in his life over the opinions of others. Rigoberto Gonzalez addresses a common message (“don’t worry about what others think”) from a child’s point-of-view, providing young readers with a character they can relate to and a lesson they can appreciate. The focus on what Antonio is thinking and feeling, and how this affects his other interests, makes this story particularly accessible to early and intermediate elementary-aged children. Cecilia Alvarez’s illustrations are unique, stylized, and full of color, flowing around and through the text while supporting it. Recommended for any picture book collection, in school or public libraries.½

From DJ Blurb: Antonio loves words, because words have the power to express feelings like love, pride, or hurt. Mother's Day is coming soon, and Antonio searches for the words to express his love for his mother and her partner, Leslie. But he's not sure what to do when his classmates make fun of Leslie, an artist, who towers over everyone and wears paint-splattered overalls. As Mother's Day approaches, Antonio must choose whether or how to express his connection to both of the special women in his life. Rigoberto Gonzalez's bilingual story resonates with all children who have been faced with speaking up for themselves or for the people they love. Cecilia Concepcion lvarez's paintings bring the tale to life in tender, richly hued detail.

Reviewed by Emmy Pérez at the El Paso Times. "'Fugitives' explores pain and occasional redemption," 2/25/07

There are two poems by Gonzalez at Poetry Daily.