Growing through the ugly

"August 31, 1969. This is my first day of being dead but I want to return to my abuelita's house. Granny's little red brick casita. Memory is stuck inside this box with me...." So opens this evocative and singular novel in which Buzzy Digit, a child-turned-soldier, is dead, although his memory is still alive and luminous. In magical and poetic prose, Growing Through the Ugly tells the story of growing up Chicano in El Paso, Texas, in the 196Os. Abandoned first by his father who, legend has it, had gone crazy either because of the sudden drowning of his beloved niece or because his "duty as a marine medic" had "permanently stolen his soul," and then by his mother who, Buzzy tells us, left "after my daddy ran, her brave heart broken and saddened," Buzzy relives his coming-of-age in the erotically charged atmosphere of the yellow, canary birdcage of a house where he grew up with his beautiful, strong abuelita, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Buzzy's uncle brings women home to his basement room, while his cousin Red - who grows up to be Buzzy's true love - regales him with stories of her own erotic episodes in their secret hiding place in the attic. Buzzy's recollections of his El Paso childhood antics with his boyhood friends and his voyeuristic sexual shenanigans exist juxtaposed with snapshot scenes of Vietnam, "a dark red nightmare. A junkie jungle," of gloom.