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RANCHO WEIRDO
By LAURA CHESTER
Bootstrap Productions, 2008
ISBN: 9780977997596
212 pages; Paperback
GENRE(S): Fiction, Short Stories
Reviewed by Marie Mundaca
In this
collection of stories, poet Laura Chester explores the boundaries
between civilization and nature in surprising, funny, and
lyrical ways, making deep statements about man's inability
to fit itself into nature's puzzle. The strange and charming
illustrations by Haeri Yoo enhance the off-kilter surreality
of Chester's stories. Chester's quirky protagonists and their
foibles make for a delightful reading experience, and the
characters' desires and inability to make the best of their
odd situations will have many readers shaking their heads
in recognition.
Themes
of borders and boundaries being crossed are prevalent in Rancho
Weirdo. In "Bye-Ya Con Dios" an adolescent girl goes on
a birding trip with her dad, and while showing off her new
vocabulary words printed in capital letters (and sometimes
misspelled), she spills truths about her relationship with
her religious, estranged father, and her relationship with
God and nature. Her father is anxious to get out into the
woods, but she feels a little ill-at-ease because, as she
says, "Nature is surely ENCROACHING!"
Nature
continues to "encroach" civilization throughout the stories,
in various forms, often as non-Americans are invited into
the characters' posh homes. In "Law of Lead" a well-meaning
woman opens up her spacious home (soon to be "featured in Southwest Says") to Mexican immigrants traveling across
the border. But it's not food and water that those who stop
by are after; they're after rides to Phoenix and a house tour.
The immigrants are anxious to adapt and assimilate as soon
as they cross the border. In "Curse of the Forced Flower,"
a writer's house is taken over by her boarder, a seemingly
harmless young Asian woman who turns out to be more akin to
a force of nature than a human.
In "Don't
Tell Daddy," teenagers girls with psychological problems are
sent to camp to commune with nature,. The story is harrowing,
both for the subject matter and for the narrator's seemingly
flippant attitude towards her situation. After she witnesses
the destruction of the World Trade Center as a child, she
begins to act out, further exacerbated by her mother's depression
and the subsequent abandonment of her family. Talking about
herself and the other girls, she speaks, rather prosaically:
We
each have our implements and have either hurt ourselves
or another or both. I cut my baby sister. She looked like
dough. Little dough girl arms little dough girl legs.
It didn't seem wrong at the time to slice into her but
then of course the blood soaked her crib sheet and there
was a five star alarm. They rushed her to the hospital
leaving me all alone so I cut myself also. BFD.
Other
girls at the camp are victims of rape. One lost her entire
family in a fire. The girls take on Native American identities,
calling themselves Minnehahas and using Bic pens and bad attitudes
as weapons. The group bonds over their traumas, but rather
than using that bond to heal, they turn feral. They have watched
civilization fall, and decided to remake it in their own way.
Chester's
stories are short and sweet but with a bitter afterbite. Like
poetry, they tend to be small, dense, and meaningful. They
leave readers with a wisp of a feeling that blossoms as one
ponders them. The characters can often seem rather flighty
and ungrounded, but they are the perfect foils for the heavy
theme of man versus the unknown.
(January,
2009)
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