The Lost Nostalgias

Rodríguez’s ninth poetry collection (after Lotería) is a reflection on childhood memories and the Mexican American experience. The poems divide in half, with the opening section predominantly focused on poems about the speaker’s mother, and the second section focused on the speaker’s father. In a poem that perfectly encapsulates the adolescent anger sometimes misdirected towards parents, the speaker describes a mother’s ensuing reaction to a dislocated shoulder: “slammed me sideways against / our van, not once, not twice, but until / my shoulder locked back in place, / and until I felt, because the cure had done / more damage than the cause, that the sting / could be healed if there was someone, / anyone to blame.” In other poems, the speaker describes a father who works 12-hour days to provide for his family but is also too prideful to ask for help when he is hurt. Rodríguez expertly illustrates a complicated family dynamic, while still maintaining an undercurrent of love throughout the collection.