Night at the Fiestas

“When they were discovered, your grandfather was already dead. Benigna was unconscious on the floor. And they found Nemecia behind the wood box. She’d seen the whole thing. She was five.”

In this passage, the author uses short, blunt sentences and a flat tone to reveal the source of Nemecia’s trauma. Although Maria initially perceives Nemecia to be a difficult, volatile girl, she now realizes that Nemecia’s troubled behavior is rooted in the experience of having witnessed her father in an act of extreme brutality.

“Nemecia held a wineglass up to the window and turned it. ‘See how clear?’ Shards of light moved across her face.”

Marred by childhood trauma, Nemecia desperately desires a normal, functional adult life. She wants nice things and a nice home. Although she pursues her attempts at normalcy, remnants of her difficult past remain. She collects dolls reminiscent of the one she’d broken as a young girl, and here, the image of fractured light across her face mirrors her broken doll, whose shattered porcelain visage was repaired by her uncle but always bore the scars of having been smashed.

“Monica wasn’t proud of her pretentions, but it was so easy to feel disdain for these people, so vital that she not be mistaken for one of them.”

This passage speaks to the collection’s interest in class. Monica has working-class roots, but she wants to elevate her social station through marriage, education, and a recalibration of her likes and interests. She hopes to escape her class position, and because of that, she is especially harsh on other people whom she considers “poor.” In her innermost thoughts, however, Monica knows that she has much in common with her neighbors at the trailer park, even though she wants them to see her as being more erudite and educated than they are.

“But Peter had liked her mother’s accent, had liked explaining things to Monica. ‘My little conquistador,’ he had called her, my little Mexican.”

This passage illustrates the collection’s examination of the politics of identity. Although Monica hopes her marriage to Peter will help her to achieve middle-class status, she remains a symbol of otherness to him. He sees her as “poor,” and his condescending epithets for her, far from conveying affection, instead reveal the true depth of his inner prejudices.

“33 years old, the same as our lord. But Amadeo is not a man with ambition, even his mother will tell you that.”

These lines are designed create an unflattering portrait of Amadeo, and the story goes on to reveal that not only does he lack ambition, but he also lacks direction and a sense of familial responsibility. He sees his role in the passion play as his path toward personal redemption, but he will come to realize that redemption lies through a renewed commitment to his daughter.

“This last week was the most important in Jesus’ life. It was the week everything happened. So Amadeo should be thinking of higher things when his daughter shows up eight months pregnant.”

This passage further characterizes Amadeo and emphasizes his skewed perspective on religion, redemption, and responsibility. Although he views his role as Jesus as his primary responsibility, his actual responsibility should be to care for and support his daughter, Angel, especially because she forgives his negligent parenting and has specifically noted her need for a support system. In this passage, he resents her for interrupting his religious reverie when he should instead welcome the opportunity to prove his worth in the eyes of God, his family, and his community by showing his commitment to his daughter.

“Later, after there was no wedding, no moving in together, after Angel was born and learned to walk and talk with no help from Amadeo, he was relieved by how easily the obligation slipped from his shoulders.”

As a young man, Amadeo struggles in the roles of partner and father. Although his own lack of interest and short temper have caused his relationship with Angel’s mother to die, he does not blame himself, nor is he upset when he no longer has to care for his child. By establishing the longstanding fact of his negligence, the author draws greater attention to the irony in his misguided attempt to seek redemption by play-acting the role of Jesus Christ on the cross.

“He needs to know if he has it in him to ask for the nails, if he can get up there in front of the whole town and do a performance so convincing that he’ll transubstantiate right there on the cross into something real.”

Although Amadeo desperately wants to be known as a pious, devout man, he pursues this goal in the wrong way. He thinks that performative religiosity is the path toward recognition, and for this reason, he wants to be nailed to the cross rather than tied to it. Ultimately, Amadeo will find a more genuine form of redemption through his commitment to his daughter, proving that his attempt at reform cannot be achieved merely by playing Jesus in a holiday pageant.

“Even more than the story, Frances enjoyed the image of herself reading this fat book with its forbidding, foreign-sounding title.”

Frances, like many of the collection’s other female characters, struggles with her identity as she comes of age. She wants to identify as something other than a small-town girl, and her interest in literature reflects her desire to appear educated and sophisticated rather than demonstrating a genuine affinity for the written word.

“This call shouldn’t have been a surprise. As if driven by an instinct for calamity, Victor pops up when Jeff and Brooke are at their most vulnerable.”

Victor’s relationship with his children is yet another example of this collection’s thematic interest in Fraught Family Bonds. Victor is violent, struggles with addiction, and has not been a positive force in his children’s lives. Each time he appears, he causes trouble, and this particular occasion is no exception. Reconciliation is not always depicted in these stories, and although Victor’s daughter ostensibly forgives him, his son does not.

“You’re not family Victor. You forfeited that right.”

Although Brooke forgives Victor, Jeff is unwilling to do so, and the bitterness of his words hint at many years of frustration and betrayal. At various points in these stories, the author suggests that reconciliation and redemption are found in actions rather than in empty performance, and because Jeff does not see any meaningful change in his father’s behavior, he is unwilling to forgive him.

“Claire became adept at playing Mormon, and while she never fooled anyone, she didn’t offend anyone either.”

This passage addresses the fact that Claire chooses to perform the social aspects of belonging to a particular religion in order to fit in. She is ill-at-ease amongst her devout peers as a result of her parents’ interests and her step-father’s professorial work, so she tries to find acceptance through performing the actions that a devout follower would take. Many of the stories in the collection depict characters’ uneasy relationship with religion, and in this particular narrative, even the most overtly devout characters are depicted as being disingenuous in their faith.

“Just so you know, you’re going to be cast into outer darkness.”

This line speaks to the alienation that Claire feels as an atheist amongst devoutly religious people. And yet, Morgan, the girl who tells Claire that she is doomed for hell, does not embody the religious teachings that she has learned. She is unkind, judgmental, and cold toward Claire. Claire, who has not been raised in any particular religious tradition, is ironically better equipped to treat her friends and neighbors with dignity and respect than Morgan is.

“By her very presence here today, she would prove to them their snobbery and make them ashamed of their entitlement and their half-hearted acts of charity towards her family.”

This story, like many others in the collection, is particularly attuned to the politics of class. When Andrea comes of age, she is already fully aware of the differences between her own family and that of their employers, and she struggles with the ways in which this inequality impacts her relationships. 

“Stanford, Stanford, Stanford. There were weeks last summer when Andrea couldn’t sleep, so thrilled was she by the sense that her life was blooming into something marvelous.”

Mentions of education, literature, and the idea of self-improvement through erudition become motifs within this collection. Many of the characters struggle against their own class backgrounds and hope to elevate their socioeconomic status by educating themselves or by gaining closer proximity to educated people. Andrea has long felt the sting of being considered poor, and she hopes that getting into Stanford will allow her access to a world that she has hitherto seen as being closed to people like her.

“When they arrived into the clearing between the orchards and the rows of highbush Jubilee blueberries, Andrea saw that her father’s taco truck had inspired a whole Mexican theme.”

Andrea is deeply critical of the Lowell family and identifies inequality as the main factor at play in the relationship between the Lowells and her parents. Here, she feels that the Lowells view her family through the lens of bias and that they see Andrea’s father in particular as the embodiment of their stereotypes about Mexican Americans.

“If girls are going to run around like that, they should pay.”

This line reflects the collection’s focus on the complex and problematic politics of religion. Although Crystal is the object of pity and judgment in her parish, she treats other people with kindness and refrains from passing judgment on her fellow parishioners. She, much more so than the people who judge her, embodies Christian love and charity, and through characters like Crystal, the author suggests that good works have more power to elevate an individual than performative religiosity ever will.

“Crystal gripped the prayer card, enraged. Who was Father Paul to tell her that her life might be saved by a child?”

Crystal’s troubled relationship with both priests in her parish highlights the collection’s focus on critiquing the flaws of troubled religious leaders. Fathers Paul and Leon are problematic figures despite their deep religiosity, and as the story progresses, Crystal is the only character who models kindness and goodness of spirit.

“Crystal flushed with irritation. Why couldn’t Father Paul just admit that he’d fallen off the wagon?”

Addiction is a frequent topic in Kirstin Valdez Quade’s writing. Although she does not shy away from depicting the damage that substance abuse causes to individuals and to their families, she also refrains from passing judgment on those who have addictions.

“She was in her early forties, no more than five feet tall, hair pulled into a black ponytail that exposed sideburns and a swath of coarse hair growing down the back of her neck. But what Margaret couldn’t stop looking at was the scar, a pink ragged line across Carmen’s throat, raised and stretching at least two inches, nearly to her ear.”

This passage emphasizes Margaret’s bias and her inability to see Carmen as a complex and multifaceted individual. Her understanding of New Mexico and its people is rooted in stereotypes, and she makes many prejudicial assumptions about Carmen based solely on her appearance at their first meeting.

“He’d had a purpose while Margaret had drifted through it all.”

This passage reveals that at the time of Margaret’s move to Santa Fe, she is struggling with the aging process. Because she has never felt that she is truly in control of her own destiny, she realizes that she has spent her life drifting. She resents her husband for his dedication to his career and also for his constant determination to maintain a concrete purpose. She believes that because of this certainty, her husband has found it easier to navigate life than she has.

“Each day when Carmen left she swung full garbage bags into the trunk of her dented Chrysler LeBaron, and each day Margaret felt lighter. It pleased Margaret to think of Carmen using her things.”

In this passage, the collection’s focus on class-based issues is highlighted. Margaret sees Carmen primarily through the lens of class difference and assumes that she is underprivileged, that she is the victim of domestic assault, and that she speaks Spanish. Because of these half-articulated prejudices, Margaret misses the full complexity of Carmen’s personality, seeing an “other” rather than a multifaceted individual.

“My memories of my mother are insubstantial. I see her lying on her back on the living room floor, a beauty magazine held above her head as she reads, limp pages rustling.”

This passage highlights the recurring theme of Fraught Family Bonds. The narrator in this story has been abandoned by her mother, and her memories of their relationship are few and far between. However, her recollections of her mother remain wistful and affectionate despite their vagueness, and although her mother abandoned her, the author shows that this act of abandonment is itself rooted in trauma. Like many other characters in these stories, Ofelia’s mother is a complex and not entirely antagonistic figure.