Book Review: ‘Hombrecito,’ by Santiago Jose Sanchez

[Pelican Press 0]

Book Review: ‘Hombrecito,’ by Santiago Jose Sanchez

Sanchez renders these feelings of isolation in rich, lyrical prose. The effect is a deep sense of interiority, though it sometimes comes at the expense of clarity. When Santiago comments that he could have been anyone else “if only the world were different by a degree or an inch,” I was left wondering who these hypothetical selves were. It’s one thing for Santiago to be lost in his own mind, but is Sanchez lost in there, too?

A breath of fresh air arrives with Leo, a Venezuelan ********* teenager who also migrated to Miami as a child and becomes Santiago’s first boyfriend. Unlike Santiago, he is gregarious, direct and heady. His quips bring a welcome injection of humor that cracks the book open. “Tell him you’re meeting a Venezuelan princess,” he says, coaxing Santiago to lie to his brother and run to the mall. “Technically you wouldn’t be lying.”

Santiago’s relationship with Leo, though complex and emotionally fraught, proves liberating. It leads to an awakening of hookups and other romantic encounters that Sanchez conveys in searing paragraphs that blaze like iron straight out of a *****. “There was no past, no future,” Santiago narrates during a **********. “Only the hot desperation of being alive.” Eventually, however, it becomes clear that Santiago is using his hunger for **** to assuage deeper, inherited wounds.

A common criticism of diasporic literature today holds that authors romanticize and reduce their ancestral countries to signifiers like slang and food. “Hombrecito” seems acutely aware of this pitfall. Later in the book, a 24-year-old Santiago takes a trip back to Colombia, hoping the journey will be a momentous return. Instead, Santiago registers disappointment. Buildings are run-down, streets are too dangerous to navigate on foot. The country bears little resemblance to Santiago’s imagined paradise. In contending with the difference between expectation and reality, the novel prompts necessary reflections on the distortions of personal migration narratives.

The issue is that narrative inconsistencies and omissions throughout the book, including a significant revelation delivered later on, blunt the impact of Santiago’s epiphanies. “Hombrecito” raises profound questions on diaspora, memory and time, but too often they are obscured by narrative hiccups that should have been settled earlier.

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