Behind the Eyes - Hardcover

Francisco X. Stork is also the author of The Way of the Jaguar, a prize recipient in the 1999 Chicano/Latino Literary Contest. He lives in Massachusetts.

Sixteen-year-old Hector Robles, growing up in a struggling Mexican American family in El Paso, is a good student and wants to attend college. But after his older brother dies in a gang war, it's not safe for Hector at home, and he reluctantly agrees to attend a reform school in San Antonio. The action-packed scenes are laced with obscenities, and the gang confrontations and power struggles in the prison-like school are fierce and violent. Though the message about redemption is sometimes too heavy, the diverse characters are powerfully drawn, as is the elemental immigrant family story, told in flashbacks, in which Hector remembers the struggle in El Paso and his own love, guilt, and shame. In one haunting episode, Hector wins a prize for an essay honoring his father, but he doesn't tell his family about the award; he's too ashamed of them to ask them to attend the ceremony where he reads it. Link this to Milton Meltzer's Starting from Home (2000) and Richard Rodriguez's The Hunger of Memory (1982). Hazel Rochman
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