Home Boy Goes to Harvard : SKIN DEEP <i> by Guy Garcia (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $16:95; 175 pp.)</i> Reviewed by Alejandro Morales

In the last three decades, Chicano fiction has flourished. Bilingual Review, Arte Publico and other independent small presses have published some of the most important Chicano works to date. Writers like Tomas Rivera, Rudolfo Anaya, Rolando Hinojosa and Estela Portillo Trambley standout among the abundance of outstanding Chicano novelists contributing to the American literary mosaic, and who along with Latin American novelists have helped fill the spiritual and cultural literary void in contemporary American fiction. Guy Garcia’s first novel, “Skin Deep,” is a late arrival to this complex multicultural literary scene.

“Skin Deep” is the story of David Loya, second generation Chicano and an exceptional student, who leaves his home turf, an East Los Angeles barrio, to attend Harvard Law School and a position with an important New York law firm. On his way to the American dream, a spic and span Loya doubts his identity and his personal achievements. He is a man whose present existence pushes him to the point of revulsion against the self. A college friend convinces Loya to return to Los Angeles where he gradually rediscovers his past and his Mexican culture. He is enticed to search for Josefina Juarez, a Mexican undocumented worker, who is devoted to the Virgin Mary. His efforts to find the woman are motivated by a restrained anger and outrage at the pursuit of power and pleasure. The search for Josefina Juarez is transformed into a geographical, mythical and psychological symbolic voyage of self-discovery which ends in the Boyer, former United States commissioner of education and author of “High School” (Harper & Row), currently is president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Morales’ most recent novel is “The Brick People” (Arte Publico Press). rejection of hegemonic culture. The reader witnesses the cultural genesis, apocalypse and rebirth of a character who stands as a warning of the negative effects that American higher education and hegemonic culture can have on the David Loyas of this country.

The most engaging parts of the book are when Garcia’s narrator describes the characters and places of East Los Angeles. The search for Josefina brings Loya in contact with old and new acquaintances, like Johnny Benitez, a paraplegic ex-gang member; Sister Ramona, a beautiful, astute Catholic nun, and Huero Maldonado, a socially minded intellectual gang leader. These enchanting characters, who express themselves in Spanish and English, who live out their lives honestly and naturally, are also in one way or another affected by the tragedy of Josefina Juarez. The Guadalupe Catholic Church, the Maravilla Projects, the Los Amigos--Engine and Body Work garage, and Loya’s grandmother’s home are places in the barrio permeated with a past and present history vital to the identity of the characters. Centuries of Aztec and Catholic mythology, and Mexican and American history mysteriously coexist in the people and places of East Los Angeles. Loya’s education and professional experience has detached him from the lasting values of family, caring, teaching and remembering what the barrio constantly offers.

The book opens with a preface that narrates the desperate and dangerous predicament of Josefina Juarez. Realizing that her life is threatened, “Josefina prays for her dead parents and her unborn brothers and sisters. She prays for her friends and her enemies. She prays for her soul and for the souls of all others. She prays for her life.” For most of the novel, Josefina is absent until the very last when Loya finally locates her on a slab in the Los Angeles morgue. Her absence, her life and her death represents one-half of the cultural duality which resides in David Loya. Her absence signifies Loya’s loss of knowledge and simple respect for his cultural past and Mexican tradition embodied in Josefina’s devotion to the Virgin Guadalupe. Her life and rape by Kurt Randal is tantamount to Loya’s life and cultural rape by the education system. Josefina’s life of oppression, exploitation and fear is equal to Loya’s life of doubt, loss of identity and suppression of his Mexicanness. Finally Josefina’s death is not pointless, for the process of her tragedy creates the rebirth of a new David Loya. Loya experiences his rebirth in a dream that ends with: “All eyes are on the priest as he chants the sacred words and triumphantly lifts the fetus high into the air.” In the end, one victim survives. David Loya goes to Mexico to flesh out the fetus violently separated from its mother culture.

Where Garcia’s narrative falls short is in its portrayal of the world outside the barrio as a commercialized, TV soap with its prerequisites of violence, drugs and easy sex with rich beauties. Kurt Randal, Garcia’s principal Anglo character, serves as a needless foil to reveal the decadent world of rich Anglo professionals and politicians. Unfortunately, this world is all too familiar, superficial and superfluous. The reader’s patience is challenged with Kurt’s inane jokes and cliches: “Elementary, Watson.” “We’re best friends for life, remember? Butch and Sundance.” or “So much for Zen and the art of surreal estate.” At times the third- person narrator suffers from academic pedantism by interjecting theoretically in-vogue concepts such as “ . . . automobiles represented the quintessential contradiction of post-industrial democracy” and “Compared to the post-modern funk of Venice.” This language is simply out of place. Finally the kidnaping of Josefina Juarez seems contrived and quite improbable.

In spite of these shortcomings, the book is worthwhile reading. Once the reader survives the hackneyed Kurt Randal, his family and world, and steps with David Loya into the East Los Angeles barrios; is introduced to its people and places, the reader understands that no matter how much education Chicanos attain, what professional heights they achieve, they can never escape or lose their ancestral Mexican/Indian cultural heritage. It is like an ancient stream of blood that has survived centuries and has been passed on, sometimes mysteriously and unknowingly, from one generation to the next. This is the lesson that Guy Garcia’s “Skin Deep” makes the reader understand.