Book #26

Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida
by Victor Martinez

After reading of my salvation, I felt I should focus on what may be the eventual fate of my sinful, sinful soul: I read Parrot in the Oven by Victor Martinez.

Actually, I just felt I needed to read this and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Coming soon!) since I'm teaching both of them starting in a couple of weeks, and I wanted to know a little bit more than my class on the first day.

Now that I've read this one again, for the first time since UCSC (Or was it SJSU? I don't even remember.), I feel a twinge of remorse for recommending it for purchase to my department; it's not actually that fascinating a book. I remembered it as being at least partially about gangs, though largely about this young man's family; I was sort of right. Unfortunately, the gang thing only happens in the last forty pages of the book, and is just the last in a sequence of trials and tribulations this kid deals with; I could as easily told my colleagues that the thing was about a kid with a drunk for a father and the father threatens the family with a gun when they go to collect him from the bar, since I also remembered that part and it was as important as the gang thing. Overall, the book doesn't show much in the way of change for this kid: there's no great revelation, the kid's lot in life doesn't improve, he doesn't reach a new plateau as a person in any way. There didn't feel like a whole lot of point to it.

On the plus side, teaching-wise, it does come in a series of digestible chunks, with each chapter covering a segment of his life and pretty well self-contained; I suppose I can teach it as a Picaresque novel, if I can remember what the hell that really means (I learned about it from a professor with a very heavy Spanish accent, so my understanding at the time was fuzzy, at best). The little suckers should be able to relate to Manny fairly well, as he deals with poverty and a bad choice for a crush, a drunken father and a pregnant sister, etc., etc. Maybe they will think the events interesting because they are realistic. Maybe I've just been reading too much fantasy. But overall? Meh.