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A Memoir in Essays
by Edgar Gomez
Book Reviewed by:A darkly comic memoir-in-essays about the scam of the American Dream and doing whatever it takes to survive in the Sunshine State—from the award-winning author of High-Risk Homosexual.
In Florida, one of the first things you're taught as a child is that if you're ever chased by a wild alligator, the only way to save yourself is to run away in zigzags. It's a lesson on survival that has guided much of Edgar Gomez's life.
Like the night his mother had a stroke while he and his brother stood frozen at the foot of her bed, afraid she'd be angry if they called for an ambulance they couldn't afford. Gomez escaped into his mind, where he could tell himself nothing was wrong with his family. Zig. Or years later, as a broke college student, he got on his knees to put sandals on tourists' smelly, swollen feet for minimum wage at the Flip Flop Shop. After clocking out, his crew of working-class, queer, Latinx friends changed out of their uniforms in the passenger seats of each other's cars, speeding toward the relief they found at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Zag. From committing a little bankruptcy fraud for the money for veneers to those days he paid his phone bill by giving massages to closeted men on vacation, back when he and his friends would Venmo each other the same emergency twenty dollars over and over. Zig. Zag. Gomez survived this way as long as his legs would carry him.
Alligator Tears is a fiercely defiant memoir-in-essays charting Gomez's quest to claw his family out of poverty by any means necessary and exposing the archetype of the humble poor person for what it is: a scam that insists we remain quiet and servile while we wait for a prize that will always be out of reach. For those chasing the American Dream and those jaded by it, Gomez's unforgettable story is a testament to finding love, purpose, and community on your own terms, smiling with all your fake teeth.
These 10 sincere and feisty essays evince Gomez's determination to find meaning in his past and work towards a hopeful collective future. Although medical crises and tragedies are threads running through the collection, Gomez maintains a light tone. Life is sometimes unjust or demeaning for him as a queer person of color, yet he has found powerful communities of care in person and via his writing. In New York City, he volunteers at a food pantry run by a gay bar and as a model for trans makeup artists-in-training. His anecdotes often touch on pop culture and are fun and sex-positive. The stories of rekindling connections with family members are touching. There are a couple of weaker essays, but overall, the book is revealing not just of the author but also more generally of the intersectional challenges commonly faced by queer second-generation immigrants of color...continued
Full Review
(859 words)
(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
Compared to a traditional memoir, a memoir-in-essays allows for a more thematic approach and a diversity of styles and formats. It generally prioritizes ideas and memorable scenes or vignettes, and its essays might be linked or discrete. The essays in Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez appear in roughly chronological order, but a memoir-in-essays can break from convention by eschewing chronology. A looser timeline can be a way of acknowledging that life is usually not a clear trajectory from one phase to another; instead, it contains recurrences, contrasts, and connections. As Sarah Kasbeer wrote for The Rumpus in 2020, "Exploring a complex network of interactions sounds like the work of an essayist, whereas the projection of time is clearly ...
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Alejandro Varela, author of National Book Award finalist The Town of Babylon
No one writes about the terrors of late-stage capitalism with such humor, candor, and aplomb. In every sentence, Gomez elucidates the unnecessary horrors of suffering in the American context. To our benefit (and relief), he accomplishes this feat with the wonder of a child and the wit of a satirist. Affecting and inspiring, Alligator Tears is more proof that Gomez is a writer who deserves our attention.
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