Customer comments on this selection.
 Lessons Learned?
America's generation gap was exposed in the late 1960s to a degree that may never be reached again because, as the war in Viet Nam claimed more and more young lives, Americans found themselves politically at war with each other in a way that sometimes managed to split apart even families. Fathers fought sons, wives fought husbands, students fought teachers, the clergy fought the government, and young men fought themselves because duty to country so often conflicted with what was in their hearts. Even all of the political sniping associated with the war in Iraq has been unable to recreate that level of tension.
In Names on a Map, Benjamin Alire Saenz tells of the Espejo family, one of the thousands of families that did not manage to survive the Viet Nam War intact. Octavio Espejo, who was brought to the U.S. as a small boy when his parents fled the Mexican revolution, is a proud and honorable man. Now an insurance salesman in El Paso, Texas, and the father of three, Octavio considers himself to be a patriotic American. It is 1967 and his twins, Gustavo and Xochil, are finishing high school and making decisions about the rest of their lives.
The war in Viet Nam, particularly the draft he faces after high school, nags at Gustavo just as it does every boy his age. Some of his friends are eager to join the military after graduation, some are against the war and will refuse to serve, some will let the draft board decide their fate, and others, like Gustavo, are finding it difficult to decide what to do at all.
Gustavo knows that his father expects him to serve if called and that he will be proud to have a son fight for his adopted country. He knows that his mother is terrified at the thought of losing him in this war but that she will not try to influence his decision. He knows that his twin sister can hardly stand the thought of him leaving home and that his young brother, Charlie, loves him more than anything in the world. But he also knows that the ultimate decision is his. Should he allow himself to be drafted? Should he choose prison over induction into the military, or should he cross the border into Mexico and live a new life there, never to return to the United States?
Names on a Map consists of short, alternating sections in which Saenz allows each of his main characters to speak in a unique voice and from a personal point-of-view. He often describes the same scene through the eyes of three or four members of the Espejo family, allowing the reader to view all of the cracks and strong points of a family stretched to its breaking point.
Saenz sympathetically describes the motivations and emotions of those on both sides of the Viet Nam War debate and readers who lived through that era are certain to see themselves, their families and their friends in some of his characters. Those too young to have lived that part of American history, will come away with a better understanding of the period and will recognize the parallels to America's present situation. Perhaps those on both sides of today's debate would better understand each other if they were to read this one.
 Decent effort, but his previous adult novels are better
"Names on a Map" is Saenz's first foray into explicitly political fiction, or so he'll have you believe in the P.S. section of this original trade paperback. I disagree with him, but I only do so in order to praise his socio-political conscious body of work. His previous novels, Carry Me Like Water and In Perfect Light, were great examples of how fiction could capture a culture's ideology through the exploration of vivid personalities, true-to-life settings, and wonderful prose. Yes, I am a big fan of these two previous novels, but I cannot say the same for his new offering.
The problem involves something Saenz is up front about in his notes. This is an attempt at an explicitly political novel. As such, Saenz's politics bleed off of the page, often at the expense of crucial fiction conventions like subtle and exquisite dialogue, continuity of subplotting, and (most obvious and saddening here) an involved exploration of setting. In his previous novels, Saenz crafted a wonderfully accurate vision of life in El Paso/Juarez, and in terms of the border world in general. Here, however, Saenz is so focused on his thematic narrative line that he often forgets not only where his characters are standing, but why it is important to him that he explore the Vietnam War from the perspective of the borderlands. I got more from his notes about how invisible the people of the border are than the novel itself. Saenz would like for us to experience that invisibility vicariously so when the time comes for the military to grab young men, we're angry. Unfortunately, you may not feel so moved until you read his notes.
Voice is another issue here. Although the novel is written from the perspective of many characters, and each character has an opportunity to tell the story in his or her voice, from his or her thoughts, Saenz fails to take advantage of every opportunity to craft unique and interesting voices for each character. The notable exceptions are the perspectives of the soldiers who are concurrently serving in Vietnam while the family struggles with a draft notice, but even these sound familiar and often break down into stereotypical soldier dialect. The biggest disappointment was reading Charlie's sections, as I imagined a parallel between him and Vardaman from Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.
It isn't all bad news, though. I found the family dynamics to be interesting, even if I've read the same dynamic through all of his previous fiction, both in the novel and short-story forms. There is an interesting play crafted here involving transnational emigration between Mexico and the United States, and what that means for the Espejo family.
As a native El Pasoan, I was interested in Saenz's premise involving that feeling of being trapped between two worlds. He did such a fine job of it in Carry Me Like Water and In Perfect Light, and I was interested in reading about how the draft and war elements might add another dimension to the important work he has done before, but it fell flat in the end.
Three stars out of five, but only because they won't let me give it two-and-a-half.
 strong timely historical character driven thriller
In 1967 El Paso, insurance salesman Octavio Espejo is happily married to Lourdes as they raise three children together. However, the blight in his mind to his American lifestyle is his Mexican roots; Octavio has not been back or seen his family ever since he was ferried across the Rio Grande as a child.
However, his children begin to reconsider their national identity. Teenager Gustavo has received the certified "Greetings" letter directing him to report to basic training; which in the Chicano border communities means tours of Viet Nam. He does not want to go as he is becoming aware of freedom fighting in America not Southeast Asia. His twin sister Xochil still struggles to overcome her anger and acrimony over being raped when she was twelve years old. Both wonder if America is where they belong.
This is a strong timely historical character driven thriller as Benjamin Alire Saenz enables the reader to look deep into the Espejo family whose members each struggle differently with assimilation at a time of women's liberation, civil rights especially the growing Chicano awareness, and cutting across all is Nam. NAMES ON A MAP is insightful as the children reconsider and resist Americanization understanding the nightmare while their parents have doubts but embrace the dream.
Harriet Klausner
An Emotional Journey to Freedom
While America's "Greatest Generation" had World War II and today's generation has the ongoing Gulf War, a generation that lived through the Sixties had Vietnam, a military conflict that indisputably defined an era and carved a permanent wound into the nation's psyche.
Award-winning author and poet Benjamin Alire Sáenz has boldly sidestepped contemporary history and set his sights on revisiting our nation's turbulent past to tenderly tell the story of an immigrant family trying to adapt to its adopted land while coming to terms with the true cost of freedom in America.
Set in 1967, Sáenz's "Names on a Map" follows the Espejo family of El Paso, Texas, during a momentous week in September when a draft notice forces them to drop the veil of secrecy that cloaks their fears and causes them to confront their internal conflicts etched by customs accepted in Mexico, but found to be out of date north of the Rio Grande.
Octavio Espejo is the son of a wealthy family that was run out of Mexico during a bloody revolution when he was a child. Now, as patriarch of a close-knit family in the United States, he tries to rule the clan with an iron hand only to find that strict adherence to house rules causes irreparable rifts in personal relationships.
Gustavo, Octavio's son, is the recipient of the draft notice that sets into motion the novel's overarching theme of loyalty to family, country and most importantly, one's self. He broods over the price America extracts from its populace in order to sustain peace on the home front and the realization that dodging the draft may tarnish the family's standing in the community more than his own reputation.
Sáenz tells his story through different points of views with voices that are unique, yet also reminiscent of the nation's conscience at the height of the Vietnam War.
Among the characters that emerge from the novel to leave a lasting impression is Abe, a young Marine fighting in Da Nang. He doesn't want to think of home, yet finds that home is all he can think about--especially when it comes to his unrequited love, Xochil.
Xochil is Gustavo's twin sister, who is fighting her own personal battles with society. She learned early on in life that wars come in many forms and that no matter where the battlefield lies, a thousand other wars are being fought at the same time by the same participants, with no two skirmishes being exactly alike.
Finally there's Lourdes, the matriarch who is the glue that keeps the family together. By the novel's end, she comes to terms with what she's known all along: sometimes you have to give up the things you hold dear in order to hold on to them a little while longer.
"Names on a Map" is an emotional journey down memory lane that reminds its readers that war indiscriminately affects everyone, extolling a price paid for in flesh, blood, and the loss of innocence in people of all ages.
|
