Who lives in a ramshackle shack at the bottom of a California canyon? Not me. I dwell high-in-the-sky in a Wisconsin condo. The participants in this book review for you, depending on their heritage, live at the bottom of canyons, with the “luckier” ones living high above in red-roofed mansions filled with expensive stuff. Long ago, I lived in a tri-level in the Milwaukee suburbs. It was there, in my splendid kitchen of avocado and gold, that my cleaning lady said (while reaching for rags to polish my home), “Your rags are better than my clothes.” Her name was Fannie Belle and she rode the bus from her ramshackle home in Milwaukee’s bowels.
Having just returned from a hiatus in Mexico where I bargained (what a concept!) for paper flowers, a handmade bikini and a wool rug (also handmade), I failed to get her message. It was the 70s, and I was intent on learning how to make tortillas on my bargained-for cast iron tortilla maker. I watched the Viet Nam war on a color television and sipped California wines. To the east of me, Father James Groppi led marchers in a Civil Rights protest against segregation and poor housing conditions.
It’s 1995, and T.C. Boyle has published The Tortilla Curtain, a novel about Mexicans who fled the 40% unemployment rate of their native land, to hole up in California canyons. The story boils and eventually ignites on Thanksgiving Day when a Mexican child is born in a tool shed. I couldn’t help but thinking about the birth of Jesus who grew up to be persecuted simply because he was different.
Boyle, who clawed his way to become the Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University of Southern California, lives in a Frank Lloyd Wright house, but he’s made it in America because his skin is white and his will to write is strong. Perhaps he writes out of guilt. His numerous novels often address social problems, though during a recent visit to a Milwaukee bookstore, he said, “I never politicize when I write.” It’s a fine line he walks. He walks it well.
Sixteen years have passed since he introduced The Tortilla Curtain. My son and his family live in Scottsdale under a red tiled roof. They drink fine wine, and perhaps out of guilt, donated their used items to the maids who clean the big house. And they worry about a coyote swooping down from the surrounding mountains, a coyote intent on making a meal out of their fluffy little dog.
It happens just like that in Boyle’s novel where subdivisions are gated to keep out the riff-raff. It happens just like that in Boyle’s novel, and in many ways my Arizona family lives the dream touted as American. It’s coyotes versus them, and I’m not talking here about the Phoenix Coyotes ice hockey team. A “curtain” made of tortillas is not a curtain of iron, like the one that came tumbling down so long ago. That’s food for thought isn’t it?
It’s 2011 and I ask myself what has changed? Politicians rant and rave about borders and what’s moral and what isn’t; artists produce work for exhibitions detailing the plight of unfortunates. Books are written and touted; borders stretched in global chaos and a cleaning lady scores an elaborate beaded dress (but where to wear it?), while the Mexican gardener scores a big tip for killing a rattlesnake near the manse with the tiled roof. Coyotes continue snatching little dogs, but it’s better than diving for food from dumpsters, like the “illegals” sometimes do. Don’t dismiss this author as another “West Coast liberal,” the broad-brush label stuck on the backs of people who dare to differ.
And try not to blame the problem on perceived predators. Rather, read the novel and then ask yourself who the real predators are. Perhaps it will unlock the security gates built in our minds. Boyle is great writer, and I hope, that somewhere on the shelves of your library (a valued place that unlocked my mind in the long ago), his numerous books have found a home.
