Midwest Boricua, Fred Arroyo: From Factory and Farmworker to the Halls of Academe

• In Event: Precarious Settings, Intervening Performances

Abstract

To be Puerto Rican in the U.S. Midwest, where Mexican ancestry dominates Latino communities, to be a child working in Michigan’s mushroom sheds and blueberry fields, and to be a son longing for connection with an abusive, distant father already lost in alcohol, even before abandoning his family: the personal trajectory of author (and university professor) Fred Arroyo courses through a world defined by "precariedad" at the global, national, local, and intimate levels. This paper explores Fred Arroyo’s journey as chronicled in his autobiographical first novel, "The region of lost names" (2008, Arizona UP) and his collection of short stories, "Western Avenue and other fictions" (2012, Arizona UP). Arroyo’s descriptions of family violence are as brutally honesty as his chronicle of racist violence against Latino farmworkers on the part of neighboring Anglos in southwestern Michigan. The path to healing and resolution begins with a geographic search for home in Puerto Rico, followed by a strategy of isolation, alcohol and intentional forgetting; Arroyo’s main character strains to erase the names and memories that inhabit his consciousness. Arroyo’s dramatic personal journey demonstrated the healing power of art and writing. Readers are able to trace the arc of Arroyo’s lifeworld--one that transects years of poverty, institutional racism, rugged agricultural and factory work before claiming his writer’s voice and establishing a career in academia. It is a harsh, but ultimately inspiring world, one that demonstrates the power of love and art to create healing and stabilizing spaces in a precarious world.

Author

• Geraldine J Casey, Indiana University