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Reading Group Guide
Amigoland
A novel by
Oscar Casares
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Crossing the Border
Without Losing Your Past
by Oscar Casares
This essay originally appeared on the ­op-­ed page of the New York
Times on September 16, 2003. Copyright © 2003 by Oscar Casares.
Reprinted with permission.
Along with it being diez y seis de septiembre, Mexican Independence Day, today is my father’s eighty-ninth birthday.
Everardo Issasi Casares was born in 1914, a little more than
a hundred years after Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla rang the
church bells of Dolores, summoning his parishioners to rise
up against the Spaniards.
This connection has always been important in my family.
Though my father was born in the United States, he considers
himself a Mexicano. To him, ancestry is what determines
your identity. If you have Mexican blood, you are Mexican,
whether you were born in Mexico City or New York City.
This is not to say he denies his American citizenship­ — ​­he
votes, pays taxes, and served in the army. But his identity is
tied to the past. His family came from Mexico, so like them
he is Mexicano, punto, end of discussion.
In my hometown, Brownsville, Texas, almost everyone I
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know is Mexicano: neighbors, teachers, principals, dropouts,
doctors, lawyers, drug dealers, priests. Rich and poor, short
and tall, fat and skinny, ­dark-­ and ­light-­skinned. Every year
our Mexican heritage is celebrated in a ­four-­day festival
called Charro Days. Men grow beards; mothers draw mustaches on their little boys and dress their little girls like Mexican peasants; the brave compete in a ­jalapeño-­eating contest.
But the celebration also commemorates the connection
between two neighboring countries, opening with an exchange
of gritos (traditional cowboy calls you might hear in a Mexican movie) between a representative from Matamoros, Mexico, standing on one side of the International Bridge and a
Brownsville representative standing on the other.
Like many Americans whose families came to this country from somewhere else, many children of Mexican immigrants struggle with their identity, as our push to fully
assimilate is met with an even greater pull to remain anchored
to our family’s country of origin. This is especially true when
that country is less than a quarter of a mile away­ — ​­the width
of the Rio Grande­ — ​­from the new one. We learn both cultures as effortlessly as we do two languages. We learn quickly
that we can exist simultaneously in both worlds, and that
our home exists neither here nor there but in the migration
­between these two forces.
But for ­Mexican-­A mericans and other immigrants from
­Spanish-­speaking countries who have been lumped into categories like Latino or Hispanic, this struggle has become even
more pronounced over the last few years as we have grown
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into the largest minority group in the United States. Our culture has been both embraced and exploited by advertisers,
politicians, and the media. And as we move, individually,
from our small communities, where our identity is clear, we
enter a world that wants to assign us a label of its choosing.
When I left Brownsville in 1985 to start school at the University of Texas at Austin, one of the first things I was asked
was, “What are you?” “I’m Mexican,” I told the guy, who
was thrown off by my height and light skin. “Really, what
part of Mexico are you from?” he asked, which led me to
explain I was really from Brownsville, but my parents were
Mexican. “Really, what part of Mexico?” Here again I had
to admit they weren’t really born in Mexico and neither
were my grandparents or ­great-­grandparents. “Oh,” he said,
“you’re ­Mexican-­A merican, is what you are.”
­Mexican-­A merican. I imagined a ­300-­mile-­long hyphen
that connected Brownsville to Austin, a bridge between my
old and new world. Not that I hadn’t seen this word combination, ­Mexican-­A merican, on school applications, but I
couldn’t remember the words being spoken to me directly. In
Brownsville, I always thought of myself as being equally
Mexican and American.
When I graduated that label was again redefined. One of
my first job interviews was at an advertising agency, where I
was taken on a tour: the media department, the creative
­department, the ­account-­services department, the Hispanic
department. This last department specialized in marketing
products to ­Spanish-­speaking consumers. In the group were
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men and women from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and California,
but together they were Hispanic. I was hired to work in
­another department, but suddenly everyone was referring to
me as Hispanic.
Hispanic? Where was the Mexican in me? Where was the
hyphen? I didn’t want to be Hispanic. The word reminded me
of those ­Mexican-­Americans who preferred to say their families came from Spain, which they felt somehow increased their
social status. Just hearing the word Hispanic reminded me,
too, of people who used the word Spanish to refer to Mexicans. “The Spanish like to get wild at their fiestas,” they would
say, or, “You Spanish people sure do have a lot of babies.”
In this same way, the word Hispanic seemed to want to be
more user-friendly, especially when someone didn’t want to
say the M word: Mexican. Except it did slip out occasionally.
I remember standing in my supervisor’s office as he described
calling the police after he saw a car full of “Mexicans” drive
through his suburban neighborhood.
Away from the border, the word Mexican had come to
mean dirty, shiftless, drunken, lustful, criminal. I still cringe
whenever I think someone might say the word. But usually it
happens unexpectedly, as though the person has pulled a
knife on me. I feel the sharp words up against my gut. ­Because
of my appearance, people often say things in front of me they
wouldn’t say if they knew my real ethnicity­ — ​­not Hispanic,
Latino, or even ­Mexican-­A merican. I am, like my father,
Mexican, and on this day of independence, I say this with
particular pride.
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A conversation with Oscar Casares
Tell us about the experience of writing your first novel. In
what ways was it challenging, and how did it differ from
writing a story collection like Brownsville?
The challenge for me was finding a story that I felt could sustain a reader’s attention throughout the length of a novel.
Though most of the novels I read are interesting on some level
and certainly well written, they also tend to drag after a
while, which is something that happens much less with short
stories. The length of the average novel obviously has a lot to
do with how difficult it is to keep the reader engaged. But
having first written a story collection, I knew there was also
an ­urgency to the short form that I wanted to maintain.
In Amigoland, you write about old age with humor, depressing reality, and poignancy. What is it like writing older characters as a younger man? How were you able to put yourself
in that mind-set?
I remember a reviewer pointed out all the older characters in
my first book, which at the time totally caught me off guard,
since I wasn’t aware of how many there really were. My
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­ arents had me late in life, my father being fifty, and my
p
mother forty-two. They had just celebrated their twenty-fifth
wedding anniversary. This was back in the 1960s, before so
many people were having children at that age. My father used
to tell me people were always confusing him for my grand­
father. Because of the ­experience of growing up with older
parents, I guess I always had a slightly different perspective
and maybe understood something about what they were
­going through as they aged. Halfway through my writing the
novel, my father, who had just turned ninety, fell and broke
his hip, which led to his spending the last three years of his
life in a nursing home. This experience, which was possibly
one of the most difficult for our family, also brought me
closer to my father in ways I would never have imagined.
This is a novel about brothers and what it means to be family. What is your relationship like with your siblings and your
family?
Because my siblings are so much older than I am, I sort of
grew up as an only child. By the time I was born, my oldest
brother, Noel, was already married with two kids; my brother
Idoluis was a student at the University of Texas and would
soon be in Vietnam; and my sister Sylvia, who was still at
home, would later move away to college when I was in the
first grade. Though there was this huge gap in our ages, my
parents always stressed that we needed to get along, watch
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out for each other. It stayed with us all these years; enough
that in a pinch we each know someone will be there for us.
Amigoland is based in part on your own family’s history. Tell
us about the autobiographical details that influenced your
book. Were you able to uncover any of the truth behind your
family stories?
I’m not sure if I have ever written anything that wasn’t to
some degree based on my family’s history. In the case of the
novel, the story within the story­ — ​­that of the grandfather
­being kidnapped in Mexico by Indians and brought across the
border to the United States­ — ​­is based on the story of my own
­great-­great-grandfather’s kidnapping in northern Mexico in
1850. This was perhaps the first story I ever heard my Tío
Nico, my father’s youngest brother, tell me when I was growing up. The only problem was that my father thought the story
was all made up, as does Don Celestino in the novel.
I grew up not sure whom to believe, so when I started
writing about my family in Mexico I wanted at least to know
that the story was plausible, that something like this had in
fact occurred at this place and time. In 2002, I traveled to
Monterrey, Mexico, and met with the archivist of Nuevo
León, the northern state where the incident took place. We
met only long enough for him to hand me four books he had
written about the Indian raids of the ­mid-­1800s. I stopped
my research at this point and started writing.
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Discuss how storytelling in your family laid the seeds for
your eventual development as a writer. What initially ­inspired
you, and what did you first write about?
It always surprises people when I tell them I never read as a
kid and had no literary background before I started writing
in 1996. But the truth is my literary experience came in the
form of a strong oral tradition. Two of my uncles, Tío Hector
and Tío Nico, would come over to the house and tell these
incredible tales about our family’s history along the border.
Hearing their stories was the only thing that brought me
­inside the house or made me want to turn off the TV.
When I first moved away from Brownsville, and then later
Texas, telling these stories was part of what kept me connected
to my home. When I first started writing, I basically transcribed these early stories, which was great practice because I
obviously already knew the beginning, middle, and end of each
one. Now all I had to do was learn how to tell these same stories on paper and then eventually find my own.
The dividing line between Mexico and America is both real
and fluid in your writing. In what ways did you try to draw
out both the similarities and differences between life on ­either
side of the border?
I think one of the major misconceptions is that there is a clear
and distinct line, particularly along the border region. The
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reality is that the cultures and values of each country have
spilled over this supposed line, at times making it difficult to
know which country might have influenced the other. Some
of this blurring occurs in the novel when we see how the
brothers’ immediate families are fractured in different but
similar ways as those of their distant relatives in Mexico. In
each case, we have situations where people have left their
families behind in order to find a better way of life. And, of
course, neither side of the border has a monopoly on this
particular desire.
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Questions and topics for discussion
1. Don Fidencio and Don Celestino constantly bicker with
each other, but they have more in common than they
would admit. What traits do the two men share? How do
these similarities influence their relationship?
2. Amigoland explores the way family stories survive over
time. What stories have been passed down in your family?
Have they been reinterpreted, embellished, or debated?
How so?
3. What do you think of Amalia’s decision to put Don Fidencio in a nursing home? Do you think her father could ever
forgive her­ — ​­or understand her decision?
4. Why do you think Don Fidencio gives everyone in the
nursing home a nickname? Do you feel there’s a reason for
this beyond his failing memory? What does this show
about his relationship with his fellow residents? And how
might this lend irony to the name of the nursing home­ — ​
­and the title of the novel?
5. Discuss the borders that exist between Socorro and Don
Celestino­­ — ​­both geographic and social. How do those
borders affect their relationship?
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6. The novel’s narrative point of view shifts among the three
main characters, allowing readers to come to know and
understand each of them. Which of the three characters
did you empathize with the most, and why?
7. When describing Don Fidencio’s realization about old age
on the road trip, the author writes that “he had escaped
one prison only to discover that there was no way of escaping his own failing body.” Did Amigoland change your
perception of the elderly or the aging process? How so?
8. In the course of the novel we are made privy to several of
Don Fidencio’s dream sequences, which are moments
when time, memory, and reality collapse. What meaning
did you find in these passages? Do they symbolize anything about the frustrations and futility of old age?
9. Why do you think Don Celestino was so hesitant to
­acknowledge his relationship with Socorro?
10. Oscar Casares makes it clear that sexism and certain stereo­
types still persist. How does Socorro conform to and
break these stereotypes in her roles as a wife, widow, and
mistress?
11. What do you think drives Socorro to push Don Celestino
so strongly to reconnect with his brother? Do you think
it is partly out of her desire to connect with Don Celestino on a deeper level?
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12. How does Oscar Casares convey the different flavor of
life in Mexico compared to Texas once the trio crosses
the border on their road trip? How do the people the trio
encounters along the way illuminate the character of the
country?
13. Do you believe Don Celestino will be able to give more to
his relationship with Socorro after they return from the
trip? If so, what do you think changes his outlook on
their relationship?
14. Don Fidencio and Don Celestino are both older men in
need of reawakenings, and their road trip is something
like a quest to reclaim their dignity in old age. Do you
think they succeed in accomplishing this goal by the end
of the journey?
15. Why do you think Don Fidencio was content to stay in
Mexico with Carmen and Mamá Nene? What did he
find there, and how was what he discovered meaningful
to him at the end of his life?
16. In the end, it is the journey embarked upon by the three
main characters that teaches them the most about themselves. Discuss why the journey itself is more important
to the story of Amigoland than learning the truth about
the Rosaleses’ grandfather.
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Oscar Casares’s suggested
reading list
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
Women in Their Beds by Gina Berriault
The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones
The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz
Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father
by Richard Rodriguez
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
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