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Daniel Chacón. Chicano Chicanery. Houston, Texas: Arte Público Press, 2000. $11.95 paper (ISBN 1-55885-280-8), 152 pages.
The first lesson you should learn from Daniel Chacón's short story collection, Chicano Chicanery, is simple: the author is seriously screwing with you.
This collection of thirteen stories exhibits the work of a clever storyteller who is not afraid to make his readers squirm, laugh, and most importantly think about our notions of Chicano identity and how fragile they really are. In the last story of the collection, "Epilogue: Story #7 in D Minor," which revels in meta-fiction, Chacón confides that he is boring and has no story to tell. He then offers a menu of stock Chicano stories he could write (including a mouthwatering tale about "an abuelita making tortillas on a comal while spewing wise dichosa"). Finally, he provides six lines of blank space for you to write the Chicano story you would like to hear. By this time, dear reader, hopefully you've learned your lesson.
Instead of lecturing on the psychological effects of assimilation and appropriation on the lives of Chicanos, Chacón's class takes the demonstrative approach. Without remorse, he pushes his characters into situations that make them traverse the hyphen between "Mexican-American" like a tightrope. And then he takes away the net. And then he adds a strong wind. And then he adds a sea...