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Chango's Fire (Rayo: New York), Ernesto Quiñonez's
second novel about New York's Spanish Harlem, or 'El Barrio' for the
cognoscenti, is ostensibly a protest novel about gentrification and more subtly
an internal debate about racial identification within the main character Julio
Santana. The fast-moving plot and
unadorned prose of Chango's Fire make
this book a good read. But what takes
this novel to another level is Quiñonez's
extraordinary ability to detail, and nurture, and then unveil
complex emotions in his characters. For
any reader who wants to believe in a difficult protagonist, and appreciate the
reality of El Barrio beyond facile stereotypes, this book is essential.
The story of Chango's Fire is told from the first-person
point of view of Julio Santana. Julio is
an arsonist who burns down buildings in El Barrio for investors and his
sinister boss Eddie. Julio has managed
to save enough money to buy his own home, the third floor of an old brownstone
that he shares with his mother and father.
The second floor is owned by Helen, a güerita
who writes soulful letters and is trying to find her place in a neighborhood
often hostile to outsiders. Helen likes
Julio, but their relationship is, well, complicated. The first floor is a Pentescostal
church owned by Martiza, a political activist/pastor
who is selling illegal citizenship documents to undocumented immigrants.
Julio works at a
construction job by day, and takes college courses at night. He struggles to make that leap from a
questionable, illegal way of living toward an educated, legitimate life, one
permanently beyond the projects. But as
he attempts to stop setting fires for Eddie, Julio is pulled back into a
dangerous nether world, one with its roots in official government policy, and
official neglect, in insurance fraud and the relentless march across America of
Starbucks.
Julio struggles
with his difficult choices, which eventually paint him into a corner of
destruction enveloping his friends and family.
Amid the tension and chaos, he is aided by Papelito,
the owner of the botanica across the street, San Lazaro y las Siete
Vueltas.
Simply for its sensitive and revealing treatment of the practice of
Santeria, Chango's Fire is a worthy
book. But it is also a political book,
with Quiñonez's harshest words saved not only for the
forces that turn a traditional working-class neighborhood beyond the grasp of
the working class, but also for employers who use and abuse undocumented
immigrants (primarily Mexicanos, in today's El
Barrio).
Yet the primary
literary achievement in Chango's Fire
is Quiñonez's ability to get into the heart of Julio
Santana, and how Julio feels about who he is, and who he wants to be, and how
he finally connects with Helen, whom he saw as the enemy at the beginning of
the novel. There are essential questions
here about who is a Latino, who should a Latino be, and what we have done that
is right, and what we have done that is wrong.
It is a cultural criticism and self-analysis that catapults this novel
beyond entertainment or today's politics.
As readers, we arrive at a bold new place, and a new way of thinking, by
the end of Chango's Fire, and that's the
definition of a book that matters.
This newspaper
article appeared in the Sunday Books section of the El Paso Times on November 21, 2004.