In 1957, a CIA backed coup d’état overthrew democratically elected president of Guatemala. Forty two years later, the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification concluded that over 1.5 million Guatemalans had been displaced internally, and over 200,000 Guatemalans had fled to Mexico during the forty-year civil war that followed. Over 200,000 more Guatemalans, the vast majority of them indigenous Mayan peoples, were killed or “disappeared” by the State’s armed forces from 1978-1995. The Tattooed Soldier grapples with the fraught history of the USA’s military and economic entanglement in this conflict through the stories of three focal characters; two living in East LA just prior to the 1992 uprising, and one left dead at the hands of the “Jaguar Battalion” after voicing concern over water pollution in the refugee slums of Guatemala.
Antonio Bernal, the first focal character in Pulitzer Prize-winning Hector Tobar’s, The Tattooed Soldier (1998), is a political refugee of the Guatemalan Civil War driven to Los Angeles because his wife (Elena; another focal character) and son were massacred for writing a letter of protest to the departmental government about the harmful health effects caused by untreated sewage seeping into a local barrio’s drinking water. After being evicted from his LA apartment, Antonio wanders LA’s Crown Hill neighborhood and McArthur Park aimlessly until he spies one of his family’s killers playing chess. After stalking the ex-soldier, Guillermo Longoria (the third focal character), Antonio eventually confronts his nemesis in the chaotic midst of the 1992 LA Uprising. Yet the novel hardly presents itself as a “chilling revenge story” (as a blurb from People magazine attests on the cover of the Penguin edition of the book). The majority of the book deals with mapping layers of different forms of economic, social, and environmental injustice across the geographies of Guatemala and the United States. The historical roots of these injustices are mapped through time, as the reader is repeatedly turned from 1992 Los Angeles to Guatemala in the late 1970s and 1980s, as well as through space, with each of the three focal character’s movements within Guatemala and across the United States providing a primary means within the text of fleshing out each character’s emotional states and motivations.
I think The Tattooed Soldier is a modern masterpiece, and as someone who is interested in literary depictions of pollution and socio-environmental issues, I find this a masterpiece of environmental literature. While the spectacular violence of the Civil War and the LA Uprising serve as flash points in the text, it is the slow violence of poisoned water, urban environmental racism, and poverty in both Guatemala and the United States that structure and propel the plot forward. The book’s power, for me, is in its complex depiction of politics, pollution, and poverty’s effects on three character’s identity and motivations. The book helps shed light on the US military-backed atrocities committed in the Guatemalan Civil War and humanizes both the victims and perpetrators of this little-known genocide.
Despite the heavy topic matter, The Tattooed Soldier is often warm, wry, or outright humorous. Weighing in at just 305 pages, this short novel offers more bang for your buck than any other book I’ve read in a long time.
Rating: This book will stick with you as you soldier on through the summer. (trust me, I had worse puns up my sleeve)
Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Shane D. Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended.
I’m doing some binge reading to catch up with recent Nevada Barr books. The last two were not enjoyable, but with Borderline, Nevada Barr is back at her finest! The storyline is riveting, the descriptions of Big Bend National Park are alluring, but–most importantly–the heroine has re-found her humor and the author is almost playful with her banter. A great summer read.
The Aviator’s Wife is an historical fiction novel about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of Charles Lindbergh. Everyone knows that Charles Lindbergh was the first pilot to fly solo from the US to France, and many may have a vague recollection of him having a son that was kidnapped, but few know much about his wife Anne. Few people realize that she was a US Senator’s daughter, an accomplished author, and an accomplished pilot herself. Most likely even fewer are aware of his mistresses and illegitimate children. As a fiction novel, many of the conversations and events are not true, however there are enough facts woven throughout for one to really get a sense of the events from her perspective. The story begins right after that famed first flight and ends with Charles’ death in 1974. It is a fast-paced, well written story that keeps the reader’s attention from start to finish.
I read this book in my youth, in its hay day of popularity & decided to revisit it when I saw it was being made into a miniseries this year. This is the first novel in the Dollanganger Family Series. The story follows four young children (narrated by the eldest daughter Cathy) when their seemingly perfect life is up-ended by tragedy and results in them being locked in an attic, hidden from the world. This book will not go down in history as a literary classic, but it isn’t a trashy, poorly written novel either. The story is captivating and the main characters are endearing. There are themes in the book that have caused controversy over the years, but in my opinion, this is a good summer read.
Imagine a future without Natty Boh.
Don’t read this book in the winter! I didn’t rate this as a Must Read mostly because of the theme of sexual perversion which seems to have carried over from the previous book, Hard Truth. Get back to the basics of just plain murder