Happy birthday Jesús

Description

"Not since Richard Wright's Native Son has there been such a scathing indictment in fiction of the institutional racism propagated and supported by white America, or a more horrifying account of the travails faced by minority members unfortunate enough to be born into poverty. Jesus Olivas is a human monstrosity, a Mexican boy raised in Northern California whose crimes include brutally raping a prostitute and maiming a priest. First-novelist and criminal lawyer Ruiz brackets Jesus's tortured upbringing in the Fresno ghettos and the abuse he suffers at the hands of his fanatic Catholic mother with the prison experiences that constitute his adult life. The sparse, simple prose lets the story tell itself, and in developing his lead character Ruiz never falls into the trap of trying to generate sympathy for Jesus or justify his actions. The prison scenes are particularly savage and disturbing, and while the courtroom passages stumble a bit, Ruiz manages to wring blood from the time-worn twin stones of Catholic guilt and repression. The supporting characters are briefly but fully drawn, particularly Jesus's grandmother, Ama, and Chole, the whore who becomes both his victim and the sole love of his empty life. Few readers will be able to forget the chilling experiences of a forlorn hero who's destined to take his place next to Bigger Thomas in the honor roll of seminal characters in American literature." (Mar.) via Publishers Weekly

Description

Happy Birthday Jesus chronicles the creation of a monster: Jesus Olivas, a Mexican American boy raised by his grandmother in northern California. Survival of the fittest is the law in young Jesus' world, but his shyness and sensitivity become a dark mirror for the weaknesses and sinfulness of others. Transformed into the perfect victim by his grandmother, a religious fanatic, and the teachings of his parish priest, Jesus is progressively abused and brutalized. At eighteen, he marks his coming of age with the savage rape of a prostitute, the only person who ever loved or be-friended him, and with an attack that maims the parish priest he both hated and feared. As a result, Jesus graduates from the supposedly nurturing institutions of family, church and school into the labyrinth of horrors that is the correctional system. . Happy Birthday Jesus is a masterpiece of understatement that combines a lyrical rendition of the most abject aspects of the human condition with keen irony. It is a revelatory and spellbinding probe into the anatomy of madness and despair.

Subjects