In the opening lines of Sergio Troncoso’s new collection of linked short stories, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son, our narrator, David, stands in front of a casket struggling to accept that it’s his father inside. David hasn’t been home to his native El Paso neighborhood of Ysleta in years. He has little context for what his father even looks like anymore, and wonders to himself, “These idiots wouldn’t just put anyone in there, would they?” His father’s face is gaunt, wax-like, the patriarch’s trademark “slight smirk now a permanent smile.” When David’s mother bends down to kiss her late husband’s forehead, he wonders if the makeup might flake off, the façade of a peaceful, dignified sleep broken. Everything is distorted. Nothing is what it seems.
From the start, this book takes place not so much at the border of things as on their edge: the contact zones of life and death, past and present, here and there, old and young. In the characters’ minds, we find ourselves on one side of a divide, perpetually looking back or across. With Troncoso, that endeavor is often as dark as it is funny. The El Paso author’s newest collection depicts contemporary Mexican American life with a characteristic blend of sorrow and humor. It’s his most powerful work yet, and an essential addition to the Latinx canon.
