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| Image from Amazon |
by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
One of the books I read this past week was Benjamin Alire
Sáenz’s Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. It’s a beautiful, tender, nuanced book about two lonely El Paso boys who become best friends. Both are Mexican-Americans who have questions about how to be true to their roots while making their way in America. But they are very different boys, one naturally cheerful, the other melancholy and full of bottled up rage. Dante, the son of a college professor and a counselor, has mostly accepted that he’s a pocho, not a true Mexican, and can find the joy and laughter in almost any situation. Aristotle is less sure about fitting in the world and is haunted by the specter of an older brother who was sent to prison and a father who still struggles with the emotional war wounds of Vietnam. Both sets of parent love their sons without question, but the way they show it are just as different as Dante and Ari are different from each other. Saenz evocatively captures an aspect of the Mexican-American experience that is often overlooked, the desire to belong in a place where stereotypes of the poor, uneducated gangbanger Mexican dominate the cultural expectation. Ari’s mother best verbalizes that tension by asking Ari if he knows what an ecotone is. Ari respondes “It’s the terrain where two different ecosystems meet. In an ecotone, the landscape will contain certain elements of the two different systems. It’s like a natural borderland…I live in an ecotone, Employment must coexist with goofing off. Responsibility must coexist with irresponsibility.” Saenz repeatedly uses motifs of rain and storms, as well as deserts and ecotones to describe the painful, yet wonderful place between childhood and adulthood that is male adolescence. The book is almost lyrical in places, and the words practically beg to be read aloud.
Of course, one of the reasons we are reading this book in the first place is because of the accolades it’s received, winning the Printz honor, the Pura Belpre Narrative Medal, and the Stonewall Book Award, just to name some of the more prominent lauds. I think it rightfully belongs in the cannon and I think it will have a decent amount of staying power. One of the other things that sets this book apart is that it explores the very treacherous shoals of love, both familial and romantic. Ari eventually must confront both his parent’s decision to shield him from his older brother’s awful crime and his true feelings for Dante, both of which are painful but necessary discoveries on the road to adulthood. In some regards, it’s a book about coming out, but it’s incredibly more rich and nuanced than simply a book about two boys who fall in love. I think this book belongs in every YA library’s shelf, and think it would be very important and enjoyable book for any number of boys who don’t feel they have a place in this world and find themselves inexplicably angry at their situation.
