Volver: A Persistence of Memory by Antonio C. Márquez (review)

Volver: A Persistence of Memory is a memoir bringing together the people, places, and historical moments that have shaped the life of Antonio C. Márquez, a native son of El Paso and current professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico. Within the space of eight relatively short chapters, Márquez recounts growing up in a multiethnic border barrio, as well as some of the joys and difficulties he experienced as a husband, father, and scholar later in life. From tales about his great-uncle's role in the Mexican Revolution to descriptions of the lunches he enjoyed with his wife, Teresa, in Madrid and Paris, Márquez returns to a constellation of times and places preserved by memory to tell a story that is intensely personal yet accessible. The US–Mexico borderlands become a powerful memory source for Márquez, and so many of his memories broach topics related to immigration history and ongoing border violence.

Among the chapters that most poignantly underscore the centrality of the borderlands are the first two: "The Loss of Innocence" and "Rites of Passage." In these Márquez offers a recollection of his paternal grandparents and their influence on his perception of the world. It is in the company of Alejandro and Elodia that a young Antonio Márquez learns about the hardships suffered by the poor, as well as their capacity to make the most out of their situation. Márquez writes about how a penniless Alejandro and his wife Elodia crossed the Río Grande to escape the violence of the 1915 Mexican Revolution with two children in tow. He states that like so many Mexicans who fled their country at that time, his grandparents wanted to return to their homeland. "But the force of circumstances was greater than their dreams," he declares. "They never returned to Mexico, never crossed back, because there was nowhere to go back to. They quietly endured their fate. I would marvel at my grandparents' endurance" (4). Through remembering his grandparents and their journey it is as if Márquez seeks to demonstrate that his story belongs to his grandparents as much as their stories belong to him. In this way he links himself to an event and a generation of people of Mexican descent that forever shifted the social and cultural landscape of the United States.

Since it is in El Paso that his grandparents settle, the city takes on a particularly important role in the memoir. The border town is the place from which Márquez orients himself in relation to the many other sites he travels throughout his life, including California, New Mexico, and Michigan. Although he points out that his hometown could only afford an adolescent so many opportunities, El Paso becomes a source of memory he returns to again and again throughout the text, as when he recalls reading Chicano novelist John Rechy's City of Night (1963) for the first time. According to Márquez, Rechy's work inspired him to pursue creative writing for a period. Seeing that a man who "was shaped by the language and culture of the border" could be short listed for a Pulitzer, he conceived of his own potential. Although Márquez never became the writer he envisioned after reading Rechy's novel, the moment reminds him of the potentialities his border existence enables.

Scholars of Western American literature will appreciate how Volver references many national and international events that forever changed the landscape of the US West, including the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. As a scholar of Mexican American literature, I think Márquez misses some opportunities to reflect on the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, for while gesturing toward some of its achievements and disappointments, he never really engages them in critical discussion. Still, the memoir provides a perspective that sheds light on many of the tropes we see in literature of the borderlands. [End Page 394...