Chicano Chicanery

From Mexico City to “Aztlán, Oregon,” in bittersweet comic fables and through tales of frightening realism, Daniel Chacón captures the shrewd, furtive, and sometimes torturous ways by which Mexican-Americans manage to survive in intimidating territory–often only to trip themselves up.

Chacón’s Chicano Chicanery presents a baker’s dozen of short stories featuring switched identities (in both Mexico and the United States); an involuntary gang initiation; men’s betrayals of their friends and of themselves; and some slippery exploits at the law office and in the chicken-packing factory.

Are Chacón’s heroes and heroines sometimes ruthless and sometimes foolishly sentimental? Alternatively naïve and a bit too clever for their own good? Perhaps it’s because chicanery, whether it’s tricking others or sheer self-deception, is such an untrustworthy tool. Sometimes–even in the most practiced hands–it can suddenly turn into a fearsome weapon.