BookBrowse Reviews Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez

BookBrowse:

In his second memoir, Edgar Gomez recalls growing up in a poor, single-parent household in Florida and finding his way as a writer nurtured by a queer Latinx community.

Colloquially, "crocodile tears" are false ones. But the emotion is all genuine in Alligator Tears. It's still an appropriate title for Edgar Gomez's second memoir, though — not just because it's set in Florida where he grew up, but also because there was a lot of sadness in his early years, including his parents' divorce, his drug-addicted father moving back to Puerto Rico, and his Nicaraguan single mother struggling to make ends meet in food service jobs, especially after a robbery wiped out her savings. Nonetheless, these 10 sincere and feisty essays evince a determination to find meaning in his past and work towards a hopeful collective future.

The pieces trace a rough path from adolescence to adulthood. In the opening essay, "Orlando Royalty," Gomez recalls that he was watching his favorite TV show, America's Next Top Model, at age 12 when his mother had a stress-induced stroke, inciting a panic over the cost of calling an ambulance. Afterwards, his mother had recurrent Bell's palsy, which causes facial drooping. But she turned her health challenges into an opportunity to laugh and connect with her son's special interests. When her insurance approved Botox injections as a form of treatment, she pretended that she was preparing for ANTM: "Don't you know your mom is a model? I have to get ready for my photoshoot," she joked to him.

"Kids with Guns" (another borrowed song title, this one from Gorillaz, to go with Beyoncé's "Alligator Tears") is about Gomez's time as a freshman in a special high school criminal justice program. He only had one friend at the school, a wealthy white kid named Colton who dealt marijuana and once pulled a rifle on him as a joke. When Colton was caught with drugs, he lied and said that Gomez was his accomplice. Coerced into a false confession, Gomez was expelled along with Colton. It was a cruel reminder of how life was stacked against him. Even after the expulsion, Colton's privilege got him a place at an exclusive private Catholic school, while Gomez had to resort to the failing, underfunded public high school.

"Fake," set about two years later, recalls Gomez's mother (despite being on the verge of bankruptcy) buying him veneers to counteract his extreme self-consciousness about his bad teeth. It was, perhaps, a way of making up for all the fights they had after he came out to her. This essay is my favorite for delving into the mother-son relationship, and for its wit: Gomez describes the veneers as coming in "shades ranging from Beige to Pastor at Megachurch." The last lines, knowing and bittersweet, imply that an improved appearance might boost his confidence but won't guarantee success. "You could not tell me I wasn't going anywhere, that my future wasn't bright. I put one foot in front of the other, stuck my chin up, and smiled with all my fake teeth."

The book contrasts superficiality and success with struggle and disillusionment, as both Gomez and his mother awakened to the American Dream's false promise. In "Images of Rapture," set during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, worries over his mother's health resurfaced. By this time, Gomez was living in Brooklyn and working several jobs, including as a cocktail server in a gay bar. During lockdown, he signed up for unemployment benefits and focused on editing his first book, High-Risk Homosexual (2022) — its title taken from a note on his Truvada (HIV prevention) prescription. Ironically, his mother was the one at higher risk: as an "essential worker," she was expected to show up daily to her job at an airport Starbucks at the start of the pandemic. Gomez rages at the received wisdom that if immigrants are humble and work hard everything will go well, when, in fact, structural inequalities and overt racism keep them vulnerable.

The title essay commemorates the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando where Gomez and his friends used to party. Time and again, he has experienced queer communities coming together to mourn, celebrate, and help each other. In "Everything We Ever Wanted," Gomez reflects on the elation of experiencing the book launch of his dreams (complete with a knock-off of J.Lo's Versace dress) and moving to Puerto Rico to reconnect with his father, only to hear that his mother was about to have her house repossessed. (He started a GoFundMe and within a week her debts were covered.)

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.

This review first ran in the February 26, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.