Rivera, I'm Liking Your Style

As I read further and further towards the heart of …y no se lo tragó la tierra, the feelings of pity and disgust that the novel has evoked within me seem only to intensify. The heart-wrenching story told by a young immigrant boy appears to worsen consistently with no hope of eventual improvement in sight. The injustice experienced by the young boy and the Chicano migrant workers around him is infuriating. The fact that he is condemned for defending himself when physically attacked in the bathroom is beyond maddening. Although I am often angered by the injustice brought forth in the novel, I am thoroughly enjoying Rivera’s writing. The disjointed style that seems to have confused and frustrated so many classmates is in fact what I am enjoying most. Throughout the novel, Rivera continually jumps around from one narrative voice to the next, expressing at various intervals the perspectives of intolerant young bullies, heartbroken mothers, indignant young victims of racial discrimination, and so on. The multitude of voices Rivera brings to the page via his fragmented vignette style of writing give the Chicano struggle a universal quality. If the story were told in one fluid motion from beginning to end, through the perspective of the young boy, the reader would sympathize with his plight and receive a limited concept of what life was like for the Chicano immigrant. Rivera’s style, however, is much more conducive to a proper concept of the hardships, the discrimination, the displacement experienced in Chicano life. The manner in which Rivera interjects at sporadic intervals with the disembodied voices of unexpected, unintroduced Chicanos is therefore crucial to the reader’s understanding of the widespread nature of this oppression. I love that Rivera has not only found a purpose significant enough to write about, but a style that enables him to multiply exponentially the impact he achieves over his readers.