Carlos Nicolás Flores burst into the Latino/Chicano literary scene with his young adult novel, “Our House on Hueco,” in 2006. It received the Foreword Indie Silver Award for Juvenile Fiction. It was Flores’s depiction of what it was like for a young 10-year-old Mexican American boy to confront the discrimination and insults he encountered when his family moved from an El Paso barrio to a new house in the Anglo part of town.
Flores’ second novel, “Sex as a Political Condition-A Border Novel,” was published in 2015. In this novel, Flores writes about the South Texas border – the American and Mexican side, which serves as the setting for “a ribald satire of the male condition at the end of the Cold War” (Flores’ words for his novel). The fictional town of Escandón (in reality it is Laredo) is the setting for this novel and some of his other writings.
His third novel, “Pillars of Creation – A Quest for the Great Name in a Nietzschean World,” was published in July by Atmosphere Press. I jokingly told Carlos it seemed to be a philosophical treatise on the origin of existentialism, and perhaps he should change the title to something that will entice the public to buy and read his novel.
He angrily told me: “I don’t give a (expletive). That is the title I want, and I will not change it”.
Reviewers of the novel describe it as a “masterpiece of Chicano wordsmithing” in which the protagonist (again from Escandón) tries “to make sense of an absurd world on the Texas-Mexico border.”
For the first 25 years of his life, Flores lived in El Paso, culminating with a master’s in English from Texas Western College. His early fictional writings were mainly autobiographical in nature, focusing on his hometown of El Paso and on his intense and unsettling relationship with his father.
These earlier fictional stories reveal Flores’ antipathy toward his father and subsequently his aversion to living in El Paso. His avatars in these stories describe in vivid and emotional scenes the impact and trauma on Flores’ psyche and mental health.
As Carlos explained to me, he had to leave El Paso in order to eradicate all of these negative memories associated with his relationship to his father and other bad experiences during his early life.
Since 1971, Flores has lived in Laredo, teaching as a professor of English at Laredo College for more than 40 years. He reflects on his ties to El Paso and its meaning to him.
“El Paso is a ghost town. At one time, after years of living elsewhere, I considered returning until I realized it was still as toxic as the day I left. Too many bad memories, dead people, shame and trauma,” he said.
“Of course, El Paso has always been a beautiful Mexican American city, featuring a spectacular landscape with a rich mixture of Anglo, Native American and Mexican cultures. The ghosts are mine, for sure, a product of my own hang ups, fears, failings, etc. Laredo, on the other hand, while a challenging border city to live in if you’re not from here, is so different from El Paso that it gave me the space and freedom I needed to come into my own as an English professor and author. Geographic cures are not a panacea, but they can help. No doubt one day I will lay the past to rest, but not yet.”
Carlos has assured me that he will return to El Paso this summer to promote his new novel, “Pillars of Creation.” An announcement of his promotional tour will be provided soon.
Daniel Acosta Jr. is retired and lives in Austin. He is a former professor of pharmacy at the University of Texas, dean emeritus of pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, and former deputy director at the Food and Drug Administration’s National Center for Toxicological Research. He and Carlos Flores were classmates at Austin High School and after 60 years have renewed their friendship.
The post Opinion: An El Paso author reflects on why he had to leave his hometown appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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