Recovery and Loss: Politics of the Disabled Male Chicano

Abstract

In his ethnic narrative The Rain God, Arturo Islas explores the Mexican-American codes of conduct that are designed to punish those who transgress traditional boundaries. In particular, he examines the effects of transgressing bodily norms. He gives his character Miguel Chico experiences with and a perception of disability that mirror his own, and, in doing so, he examines the role of the disabled male in the Chicano culture. The chronically disabled figure -- a character with polio and, later, a colostomy -- is portrayed as not only a figure moving between the world of the healthy and the world of the sick, but is characterized as what Gloria Anzaldua calls a "half dead" figure, moving between the world of living and the world of the dead. With these binaries, Islas shows how the Chicano culture misrepresents the disabled male who cannot fit neatly into categories of healthy and unhealthy, male and female, and acceptable and unacceptable. Thus, he uses disability to explode traditional cultural categories. While he proves that disability is more complicated than his culture will admit, he acknowledges the power of stereotypes and their ability to alter one's course in life. Ultimately, Islas argues that disability has the capacity to rob the Chicano male of his voice and his agency within the Chicano culture as well as the disabled culture. The Rain God is a reclamation project designed to recover that voice. Through various methods, Miguel Chico indeed recovers his voice, but his methods of recovery trap him in a state of psychological wounding and healing, proving the inescapable oppression the disabled male Chicano must endure.