(Cinco Puntos Press, 2018)

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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There are books that go beyond their intended audience and become necessary reading for everyone. David Bowles They Call Me Güero belongs to this special group. A collection of poems about growing up near the border as a bilingual, bicultural kid, this book is a deep, nuanced, heartfelt, and culturally rich look at the life of a kid that mirrors the backgrounds of millions of US residents. Between family, school, growing pains, and first love, They Call Me Güero touches on things all kids go through, but does so in a way that also appeals to adults.

Bowles writing is proud and unapologetic. This is his vision, pulled from his blood. In a way, the collection is a thinly veiled autobiography that offers a glimpse into life on the border, into families that are from, and belong, to both sides of that dividing line. That the frontera will be at the core of the collection is something the poet establishes in the first pages and reinforces throughout the text:

The beauty of They Call Me Güero comes from its simplicity, which hides a multilayered discourse. This is a collection about growing up in the interstitial space between cultures, in the space where languages intersect, and in the transitional time in life where magic begins to die and reality begins to set in, even if it’s still tinged with the fantastic myths, creatures, and fears of childhood. Bowles navigates these spaces incredibly well, showing that youngsters tend to fluctuate between micro spaces where little things mean the world and macro spaces where their past and present meet to tell them things about them, their culture, and even their future.

There is a kid at the center of these poems, but that kid simply acts as the filter for a plethora of events, scenes, and an entire family. Hanging out at the house, sending time with family, sharing meals, and learning about the past are all things we would like children to experience, and that experience here can be shared and explored within the context of Otherness. Sure, cultures and languages crash, but the result is not destruction; the result is a new way of life, an ever-changing mixed culture. Take, for example, the beautiful “Uncle Joe’s History Lessons”:

My uncle Joe
is the family chronicler,
a cowboy philosopher,
our local expert in
Mexican American history—
he lived through a lot of it!

One day we head to the river,
set up chairs in our favorite spot,
a shady refuge at the edge of his ranch.
“When I was a chavalito,” he says, watching
the water flow, “didn’t nobody teach us
about our gente, about the Revolución.
They made the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
sound like a blow struck for democracy
instead of the violent land-grab it was!
This should be México, m’ijo. The border?
It crossed right over us.

Es más, when I was in elementary
they didn’t let me call myself Jose?!
It was Joseph this and Joseph that.
So I became Joe. And forget using Spanish.
They caught you saying a single word, y
¡PAS! You got smacked.
Spellbound and angry, I ask Uncle Joe
if that’s why he never went to college
even though he’s so smart.

“Pos, si?. Also, nobody believed in me.
Fíjate. When I was in 7th grade like you?
Counselor asked me what I wanted to be.
A lawyer, I said. That white lady almost
laughed in my face. ‘What? No, Joseph.
You should go to a technical college,
become a mechanic. No shame in
Hard work!’ Vieja racista.

“Still, I kept at it, Güero. Studied hard.
But in high school? Turned in a paper
for world history about the Conquista.
I worked so hard on it, did research,
revised and edited, todo ese jale.
Know what I got? An F. I’m not kidding.
Teacher said it was too good.
Obviously plagiarized. After that, pos,
I gave up. Gatekeepers weren’t letting
this Chicano through.”

Then he leans forward and looks
at me, super serious, his eyes suddenly red
with rage or sadness or hope.
Even the chachalacas go quiet,
like they’re listening, too.
“Don’t you let them stop you, chamaco.
Push right through them gates.
It’s your right. You deserve a place
at that table. But when you take your seat,
don’t let it change you. Represent us, m’ijo,
all the ones they kept down. You are us.
We are you.”

Conversations, memories of stories told by grandma, games with friends; all these and more come together in this collection. They make it unique and universal, simple to understand and heartfelt, beautiful and ugly in many of the truths they carry. Since they were written with kids in mind, the poems have a Dick and Jane quality to them, but that only makes their enjoyment more immediate, the same way it happens with Langston Hughes work.

With They Call Me Güero, Bowles has added an important text to borderland writing that would have made the great Gloria Anzaldúa proud. This is a collection that resonates with readers, and that given the current political landscape, demands to be read.