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.In Julio s neighborhood, this migration is a cause for alarm.RentsErnesto Quiñonez 91will rise, restaurants and bars that the locals cannot afford will appear, and, perhapsmost significantly, the neighborhood as a tight-knit community will dissipate.Helen emerges as the new face of change.Julio is conflicted.He is attractedto her and wants to learn more about her, but she represents the influx of out-siders that he resents.She arrives full of righteous hope, trying to open an artgallery, which is ambitious and perhaps misguided.She frequents the kinds ofbars that Julio avoids.In short, she does not understand the neighborhood; sheresponds to catcalls with anger and direct confrontation, unaware of the violentrepercussions her boldness may provoke.She is appalled by the lack of policeprotection and the unfair treatment of women.She even attends a communitymeeting and is outraged that no one will talk about the very gentrification thatshe represents.Still, she realizes that merely taking Spanish classes or attempt-ing to understand the culture will not integrate her into her new world.She is aperennial outsider.Julio s mother welcomes Helen; she wants Julio to marry Helen and produceblond grandchildren.However, it is Julio s father who intrusively reads Helen s twoletters and who tries to reconcile Julio s conflicted feelings.The father explains thatif Julio wants to show Helen the barrio he is so proud of, he needs to take her backto the East Harlem of the 1960s, when the activist movement and the neighbor-hood were at their peak.The old Spanish Harlem is no more, he believes, despitethe fact that it was not too long ago that Puerto Rican newcomers displaced manyof the Italian residents who had already staked a claim to the neighborhood.Ac-cording to Julio s father, neighborhoods are forever changing. You can t be an-gry at her for not understanding, me entiende? Julio thinks,  I do understand.Doesn t mean that it s all good.That no harm is done.The Power of FireFire plays a central symbolic role in the novel.The book opens with Julio complet-ing his recent arson job.Even though the fires he sets are requested by the own-ers of the vacant buildings, Julio s participation signals a betrayal of or a lack ofrespect for the neighborhood he claims to love.Throughout his childhood, Julio sneighborhood was plagued by fires set by landlords looking to make money fromthe insurance settlement or seeking government funds to rebuild.Fires were soprevalent that often families were warned that their building would be torched,and children explained to their teachers that they would be missing school the fol-lowing day.Fire marshals would arrive to see whole families waiting on the curbwith their suitcases packed.Other times, families were not warned, perishing inthe flames.Fire disrupted lives, displaced members of the community, and erodedoften deeply forged neighborhood connections.Fire touched Julio personally at the age of 16.His father had joined the churchas an outlet for his music, and due to his talent the church grew.It moved to a largerspace, and Julio s family rented an apartment above it; they spent a lot of time helping92 HISPANIC-AMERICAN WRITERSto fix it up. I m embarrassed to say it, Julio observes,  but those were wonderfuldays growing up, every moment was a Sunday afternoon. Still,  [m]ysteriously,like God Himself, at night, the church had somehow caught fire.One by one,the buildings on that block were torched. The destruction of the church marks themoment when Julio loses his faith in Christianity:  It was from that day on that, forme, the word of God was never  love or  light but  fire. It is no coincidence, then, that Julio s Orisha, or god, is Changó, the sourceof fire and lightning.Papelito even calls him Hijo de Changó or  son of Changó.The book takes its title from this metaphor.Is the novel s title in reference to thefires that Julio sets? Or does it refer to the fire that Trompo Loco starts to gain hisfather s approval? Alternately, the title could refer to Changó himself, a vengefulgod who repeatedly destroys Puerto Rican lives and families.DiscriminationDiscrimination, too, plays a large role in the novel.Quiñonez explores the politicsof construction sites and the exploitation of illegal labor.The boss, who is nevernamed, is racist, calling all the workers  tacos and claiming that it is in their na-ture to steal.He does not understand why Julio would come to work when he hasa social security number he can use to get someone else to do the labor for him.When the pipes are stolen from the job site, the boss docks the workers pay, andbecause they are illegal, they have no recourse.When Julio goes to meet Helen in the trendy new bar, a white patron ap-proaches him immediately on entering, asking where he can buy drugs, presum-ing that the neighborhood s nonwhite residents traffic in drugs or know peoplewho do.Recently arrived immigrants face their own set of challenges in the novel.Julio goes to visit Antonio, who lives in a small, bug-infested apartment with nineother men.Conditions are deplorable.Julio feels misjudged by his neighborhood as well.Because he lives with hisparents, has no girlfriend or wife, and is close friends with Papelito, a homosexual,he is believed by many to be gay as well.Because he is not a violent individual,he cannot protect Helen when she starts a fight.Community members projectconclusions and qualities onto Julio without considering other explanations or thelack of awareness informing their slurs and prejudices.On a similar note, Quiñonez addresses the machismo Julio sees in his neigh-borhood.When he drives the young woman seeking the surgical procedure thatwill simulate a virginal state, he understands it is because of unfair, double stan-dards at work in the community.When he asks Maritza why she condones thissurgery, she answers,  This is female genital mutilation.Of course I m against it.It s really about control over women.But right now, I have a scared girl who if shedoesn t bleed on her wedding night is going to get the shit beaten out of her. Theyoung woman is desperate and chooses to have the operation, but even that choiceErnesto Quiñonez 93is not without its risk or danger. If you have sex with stitches, well, you ll fool yourhusband but you could die.Helen is outraged by the way she is treated on the street in East Harlem.Sheassociates with Maritza, because Maritza is working for equality [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]