{"id":33911,"date":"2021-06-06T16:05:44","date_gmt":"2021-06-06T20:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldcatholicnews.com\/as-the-train-goes-forward-his-mind-travels-back-in-time\/"},"modified":"2021-06-06T16:05:44","modified_gmt":"2021-06-06T20:05:44","slug":"as-the-train-goes-forward-his-mind-travels-back-in-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldcatholicnews.com\/as-the-train-goes-forward-his-mind-travels-back-in-time\/","title":{"rendered":"As the train goes forward, his mind travels back in time"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Ellen Akins<\/p>\n

THE WASHINGTON POST \u2013 Francisco Goldberg, the narrator of Monkey Boy<\/i>, might be easily confused with the author, Francisco Goldman.<\/p>\n

Like Goldman, the acclaimed Guatemalan American author of The Art of Political Murder<\/i>, Goldberg has recently published an expos\u00e9 of a political murder, \u201cDeath Comes for the Bishop\u201d.<\/p>\n

Like Goldman, he\u2019s also aired the family\u2019s business in a novel, prompting his fictional mother to tell her Guatemalan relatives and friends: \u201cDon\u2019t tell Frankie anything. He\u2019ll put it in a book.\u201d<\/p>\n

Confused? Such are the perils of auto-fiction, in which the novelist\u2019s life and story are so densely enmeshed that telling one from the other looks like part of the plot.<\/p>\n

This is certainly true of Monkey Boy<\/i>, in which the Francisco is grappling with the alternative facts of his family history and hyphenated identity.<\/p>\n

The year is 2007 and 49-year-old Francisco (aka Frank or Frankie Gee), just off a dangerous stint doing investigative journalism in Mexico City, is on his way from New York City to Boston to visit his Mamita in a nursing home.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the plot. But the literal train ride is mostly a pretext for the train of thought Frank conducts along the way, with stopovers at key points in his past, reflections on recent political history and speculations about his romantic prospects.<\/p>\n

While hoping to coax some old secrets out of his memory-challenged mother \u2013 about her ancestry, her girlhood, her long, unhappy marriage to his father \u2013 Frank is clearly trying to make sense of his own experience, itself subject to lapsed or distorted memory.<\/p>\n

His not-quite-estranged younger sister, for instance, remembers brutal episodes of their childhood differently and more distinctly than he does.<\/p>\n

One of the many Guatemalan girls who lived with the family now sadly recalls how frightened Frank was as a small boy, and he tells us, \u201cI don\u2019t know what she\u2019s talking about.\u201d And the niece of a man who painted his mother\u2019s portrait opens up a new view of Mamita.<\/p>\n

Frankie, however, does remember plenty, and his stories entwine personal identity, political history and identity politics until they\u2019re virtually, and judiciously, indistinguishable.<\/p>\n

The deep secret of a great-grandmother\u2019s African heritage, for example, is implicated in his own racial experience. (His friend \u201cjoked that whatever country I went to, the people from that country always saw me as being of whatever brown ethnic group was most despised there\u201d).<\/p>\n

His Guatemalan roots are entangled with the country\u2019s culture of corruption and violence. Even his career as a writer has its connection with the \u201ccommodification of ethnicity and race\u201d.<\/p>\n

Most perplexing is the mystery of his own makeup \u2013 Jewish, American, Catholic, Guatemalan \u2013 a quandary that carries him from the \u201cI want to be just one thing\u201d of boyhood to \u201cWhy can\u2019t I just be nothing?\u201d to \u201cIt\u2019s okay to be always an outsider\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet, by taking us along with him, drawing us so deftly into moments of intimacy and worldliness, brutality and beauty, the author effectively ceases to be an outsider. In Monkey Boy<\/i> he has crafted his own E pluribus unum, with room enough for stories lived, written or read \u2013 and, of course, for the two Franciscos, Goldberg and Goldman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Credit: Source link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ellen Akins THE WASHINGTON POST \u2013 Francisco Goldberg, the narrator of Monkey Boy, might be easily confused with the author, Francisco Goldman. Like Goldman, the acclaimed Guatemalan American author of The Art of Political Murder, Goldberg has recently published an expos\u00e9 of a political murder, \u201cDeath Comes for the Bishop\u201d. Like Goldman, he\u2019s also aired […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nAs the train goes forward, his mind travels back in time - WORLD CATHOLIC NEWS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.worldcatholicnews.com\/as-the-train-goes-forward-his-mind-travels-back-in-time\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"As the train goes forward, his mind travels back in time - WORLD CATHOLIC NEWS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ellen Akins THE WASHINGTON POST \u2013 Francisco Goldberg, the narrator of Monkey Boy, might be easily confused with the author, Francisco Goldman. 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