Always Running

“Our first exposure in America stays with me like a foul odor. It seemed a strange world, most of it spiteful.” 

Here, Luis describes his initial impressions of America. He is baffled by the new world he has unwillingly been thrust into. He characterizes America in terms of his senses—a foul odor. Luis, though he is very young, can tell that his family is out of place and generally unwanted.

“Mama turns to us and announces we are not leaving. I’m just a ball. Bouncing outside. Bouncing inside. Whatever.” 

Luis sees himself as an object in this quote, devoid of personhood and his own will. He is carted back and forth with no consideration for his wants and his feelings. His “whatever” demonstrates that he is learning early on to disassociate, to hide his hurt under a guise of indifference. 

“Jesus Christ was a brown man. A Mexican Indian. A curandero. Not a stringy blonde-haired, blue-eyed icon. He was like me…This is the Christ I wanted to believe in.” 

Despite the racism he faces as a child, Luis holds fast to a sense of pride in his ethnicity. His family is Catholic, and so Luis identifies Jesus Christ as being like him, as opposed to the white depictions he sees in the world at large. If Christ is his Savior, then Christ must look like Luis.