I only started reading this book because a friend was assigned it for a college course. I wanted to read it so we could talk through whatever assignments she would have for it, but I didn't expect to like it at all: you know the kind of contemporary trash on college reading lists. . . I wasn't prepared for how interesting this book would be, how much I would relate to Martinez's childhood, or how I would want to devour every word. ( )

This is a memoir of growing up in Brownsville Texas, near the border with Mexico, in a poor barrio, with few opportunities and even less hope.

There are parts of this memoir that are engaging and funny. I loved the story of slaughtering the pig to make the Christmas tamales, or his sisters dying their hair blonde, and trying to transform themselves into “white” teenagers. But I could not connect with the acting out that the boys engaged in – the fighting, drinking, and drugs.

By way of background, I grew up in a Mexican-American household, with a father who was born in Mexico, and a mother who was born in a border-town on the Texas side of the Rio Grande – the same town where I was born and where my grandparents and most of my aunts and uncles stayed to raise their families. I recognized some of the setting, traditions, and cultural mores Martinez relates. But on the whole I felt as disenfranchised from the experiences he relates, as he states he felt. The families I knew were cohesive; the parents working menial jobs, perhaps, but staying together in love and faith to raise children who would succeed.

I kept waiting for some insight, and never got it. I wanted to understand this all-consuming need to express machismo, but could only shake my head and think “not again!” So I’m left disappointed and dissatisfied. I felt I was reading the rambling notes of a journal his therapist suggested he keep, rather than a cohesive memoir. ( )

Heard two excepts from this book on This American Life which left me wanting to know the rest of Martinezs story... Looking forward to starting this when my non-fic wheel comes back around.

I picked this book up in the San Jose airport a couple of weeks ago. It was good enough that I finished half of it on the plane. Took me a little while to finish the rest of it because I snuck Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson in, and I had a ton of homework to do. But I stayed up late last night and finished it.

The book was nominated for the National Book Award. That's not what made me pick it up though. I've been reading and thinking a lot about social justice. And since I happen to live in Texas where the Hispanic/Latino population continues to grow at a rapid pace, I thought a memoir about growing up poor and Hispanic in Brownsville would make for an interesting read. It did. Not an easy one, though Martinez is funny, and a great storyteller, because his story is tough. Lots of abuse. Completely dysfunctional family. Love and hurt coexist in Martinez's family in the same way they do for many people. Sometimes it's good to just know you're not alone in your feelings, so you put your story out there. I feel like that's what Martinez has done. Writing the book seems like it might have been therapeutic for him. And I'm sure it has resonated with a lot of readers.

Good book. Worth picking up if you like memoirs. ( )

Domingo Martinez grew up in Brownsville, Texas as part of an extended, dysfunctional Mexican-American family. In this engaging memoir he tells what it was like to have a “boy-tyrant” for a father and a grandmother he believed was the devil. She took life insurance policies out on all the young men in the family – and collected often enough that each time “was like winning the lottery again.”

As an adult Martinez moved to Seattle to “follow the rain” which reminded him of some of the best times of his “seasonally deficient” youth on the border, which featured one season – hot. Martinez knew early he wanted to leave Brownsville before he fell into the trap most young men did: “The boys never left home; they just brought their illegitimate children and unhappy wives along for the only ride they knew, the one that headed nowhere.”

Martinez tells of his later problems with addiction and alcohol and how his family life contributed. This is a witty, compelling memoir that doesn’t shy away from deep emotion and even embarrassing moments. ( )