Email
Albuquerque author and activist Demetria Martínez gives a glimpse of the community of political crusaders struggling for the rights and dignity of the city’s disenfranchised in her new novel, “The Block Captain’s Daughter.”
The causes, though noble, are often a drain on their personal relationships. How they reconcile those conflicts form the stories of their intersecting lives.
 |
||
|
“The Block Captain’s Daughter” by Demetria Martínez University of Oklahoma Press, $14.95, 104 pp. |
|
|
The novel’s central character, Lupe Anaya, crossed the border alone and penniless, fleeing poverty and the oppression of a Mexican maquiladora. Albuquerque gave her refuge and a sense of family among its activists. Pregnant with her first baby, Lupe awaits reunion with her husband, Marcos, who is desperately trying to leave war-ravaged El Salvador, where he was nearly killed.
Vowing her child would not become an anglicized “ketchup Mexican” without a legacy of stories and dreams, Lupe writes letters to her unborn daughter relating her own story and vision of the American Dream.
Lupe’s lesbian-couple friends, Flor and Maritza, use different tactics in the struggle so important in their lives.
Flor, a fighter, takes to the streets and demonstrations, while Maritza labors over grant proposals she feels will fuel the crusade. For each, the residue of past relationships haunts their troubled union.
Peter, a multilingual Anglo Quaker, is plagued by information overload that keeps him from sleep, rerunning imaginary arguments with anti-immigration racists. His wife, Cory, a Chicana who doesn’t speak Spanish, often feels diminished, like “his subtitle.” Though their relationship is passionate, they struggle to expand its context beyond the political.
Lupe is an imaginative, goal-oriented self-actualizer. She teaches herself English, becomes her neighborhood’s block captain and creates what she calls Lupe’s Prayer Wheels fashioned from discarded birth-control packages.
Lupe realizes that change must come from within oneself, that inner peace and happiness are the tools by which change of real, lasting value to one’s fellow human begins. A hopeful view from the future, provided by a letter from Lupe’s daughter, celebrates the fruition of her efforts.
Robert Woltman is an Albuquerque poet and writer.
