Review | In “Mecca”, Susan Straight unearths the real Southern California –

The “Mecca” is, among other things, a plausible deconstruction of racial categories and the racist assumptions about them. Flat responds not only to how superstition motivates violence, but also to how it distorts the response to violence. Crime in this country is based on certain assumptions of guilt and innocence based on skin color, and this grueling system determines who can report a crime, how it will be investigated and what the penalty will be, if any.

Additionally, Straight introduces us to men and women whose families have lived on this earth for centuries, much longer than whites who are dubiously considered “illegal aliens”. Mexicans, Native Americans, Hispanics, African slaves and others: a rich mix of cultures flattened by an immigration and customs official who complained, “So you’re black.”

The novel’s structure brilliantly reflects this diversity: chapters move from character to character, some with first-person narrators, others with third-person narrators. A particularly devastating episode written for the other person that you will never forget.

In central Mecca is Johnny Frias, a California patrol officer who rides his motorcycle for at least 200 miles a day. Flat creates the strange rhythms of his work: mostly speeding up fines, collecting fences and quotes about drunk driving, chores caused by dangerous harassment and gruesome accidents. “No one in the world would be happy to see me if he hadn’t had an accident and feared death,” says Johnny.

The ever-risky highway patrols have become even more unpredictable lately. “Every time I got off the bike and got on the passenger side,” she says, “I expected a shot. He understands the change in racist rhetoric that Donald Trump has made acceptable, even patriotic. When Johnny stops someone these days, they’re probably told, “Maybe I need to see your ID, make sure you don’t have a bad hobby yourself.”

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Calling himself “Moreno”, Johnny doesn’t care about these insults, but he cares. As a straight, he is an attentive language learner, a flexible sound system that conveys the hopes and fears of a culture. After speaking Spanish at home and English at school, she was always fascinated by “The Third Language: American” – this mercury dialect made up of metaphors, idioms and obscene words, eg. Toke, cotta, sacred cow. He collects them all in his notebooks as a motorbike linguist. “I was blown away by how people talked to me and what I had to say,” she says.

But this is the smallest element of this extremely challenging hero. Twenty years ago, Johnny was his only friend to graduate from a police academy. Now 39, he begins to wonder if the sacrifice he made by leaving his wife and family was worth it. In dark times, he fears that his decision is largely based on fear. “Save yourself”, he thinks, “you will have fewer people to lose”.

But Johnny didn’t want to approach anyone with anything worse, something so disturbing that it reminds us a few pages later in this story: When he was just starting to take power, he stopped a violent attack in the mountains. . He killed a white man in the fight. The circumstances scared her enough to report the incident, so he buried the man’s body and didn’t tell anyone. Later he enters the canyon and remembers what he did and what he can’t do. Whenever it rains, he waits for the corpse to be washed from his nameless grave and ruin his meticulously organized life. This impulsive, understandable but murderous act prevented him from being anxious and distracted by others throughout his career.

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As soon as you turn this fascinating story, move on to something else that has nothing to do with it. We follow the life of Ximena, a young Mexican woman who is suddenly sneaked into the United States by a ruthless coyote. Ximena works at a spa for wealthy women who have undergone plastic surgery. The work is hard; Control is humiliating. With ICE agents always on the go, Mexican employees know they shouldn’t file complaints or even commit minor infractions. When Ximena finds a newborn in one of the luxurious rooms of an abandoned hotel, she panics.

Between the poles of these two ambiguous crimes, committed 20 years apart, the road reveals the details of an extremely interesting novel about a human web linked by blood, love and duty. Heartbreaking on the lower screen about how children struggled with loneliness during the Kovid pandemic. Another alludes to the mother’s reaction to the police attack is Tour de Forces, which can evolve like a classic story and stay in itself.

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But what’s most impressive about this novel is how big it is so that it doesn’t mess with extra lines or feel too well stitched. Instead, what initially seemed like a different set of experiences slowly turns into intertwined roots to create a family celebration – a celebration that becomes even more intense due to the constant threat of separation, exile, injury and even death. Interestingly, the most lasting impression here is not suffering, but determined survival, even in victory.

Ron Charles writes books and is a presenter for the Washington Post. report of the Book “Sunday Morning” for CBS.

by Susan Straight

Ferrari, Strauss and Jirou. 384 p. $ 28

Source: Washington Post

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