A Chicano in China by Rudolfo A. Anaya (review)

66 Western American Literature Los Angeles in the 30s and 40s as we do for the twists and turns of Marlowe’s investigations. Beyond Blame is a superb evocation of Berkeley, drawn with unerring accuracy from mudflat slums to the terraced hillsides and Maybeckdesigned cottages favored by academics. Greenleaf’s Berkeley is haunted by its own past. The place names— Telegraph Avenue, Sather Gate, Sproul Hall, People’s Park—resonate with memories of the Free Speech Movement and the Vietnam protests. Now, in the present, the liberalism has gone stale, the young men and women of the 60s have grown middle-aged and have punk children with drug problems. Sometimes they murder or are murdered. Tanner cannot put the times right, any more than Marlowe or Archer could, but he can deal out a rough approxi­ mation of justice and deal compassionately with the victims, especially the scarred, tough but frightened children who are the book’s most affecting characters. Your library or bookstore may have difficulty ordering this book unless instructed that Villard markets its wares through Random House. CHARLES L. CROW Bowling Green State University A Chicano in China. By Rudolfo A. Anaya. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. 202 pages, $13.95.) A Chicano in China is a chronicle of Anaya’s month-long trip to China. The author keeps a journal throughout the trip not only to record the event for himself, but also to share the experience with others from his community who would never make such a trip. At the onset of the trip Anaya writes, “I would be a traveler in search of my soul.” As a Chicano intrigued by the question of his roots, Anaya is par­ ticularly interested in the Asiatic world. From this location, the ancestors of the Native American people supposedly migrated across the Bering Strait to the Americas, thousands of years ago. Thus Anaya explores China, site of his origins, for what its secrets, symbols, legends and myths offer to his quest to understand himself and his people. Anaya observes revealing similarities between Chicano and Chinese cul­ ture. The poor, crowded towns on the outskirts of Beijing remind him of barrios in the Southwest. The people are involved in the same activities such as selling wares and vegetables and congregating in small groups outside of the small shops; the only difference is the language they speak. Buddha is compared to the Mexican god Quetzalcoatl;both have had a profound impact on culture and live on in the memory of their people. Anaya explores the many symbols that he encounters. He is especially drawn to manifestations of the dragon and the golden carp. The dragon recurs as an image that inspires awe and fear. Anaya grapples with the meaning of the dragon throughout the book until he comes closer to understanding its Reviews 67 mystery and accepting its supreme power. The image of the golden carp is particularly relevant to Anaya, given that it is the dominant symbol of his novel Bless me, Ultima. The author interprets the presence of the golden carp in China as a reaffirmation of the conection between the old and new worlds and between the east and the west. The establishment of such a bond is, ulti­ mately,what Anaya takes from his journey and what he shareswith his readers. A Chicano in China will appeal to readers interested in both Chicano and Chinese history and mythology. It will hold a special interest to those familiar with Anaya’s novels, as the symbols from the novels are poetically explored in the journal. LOURDES TORRES University of Illinois From the Missouri West. Photographs by Robert Adams. (Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1980. 64 pages, $15.00.) /. E. Stimson, Photographer of the West. By Mark Junge. (Lincoln: Uni­ versity of Nebraska Press, 1985. 224 pages, $29.95.) In Robert Adams’ 1981 book of essays Beauty in Photography, he states that landscape pictures, at their best, offer a mix of “geography, autobiog­ raphy, and metaphor.” They “make intelligible to us what we already know.” In From the Missouri West, Adams tries to “make intelligible” the west­ ern mixture of powerful landscape and casual human ugliness—tire tracks...