Críticas Magazine

Adriana V. Lopez

Alter-Latina Author, Felicia Luna Lemus' "Like Son"
February 21, 2008

I recently finished reading Like Son, a quietly touching and well-written novel by the talented Felicia Luna Lemus. The 32-year-old author, a Mexican-American born in California and an MFA graduate of Creative Writing from the California Institute of the Arts, is based in New York City. Lemus published Like Son with Akashic Books in April of 2007, following her well-received debut novel Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties with Farrar Straus & Giroux in 2003.

Like Son is gradually building into an indie favorite, recently nominated for a Lamba Literary Award.  Not relying on just good reviews and word-of-mouth recognition to increase her readership, Lemus dedicates good chunks of time touring the country’s independent bookstores and universities, taking to an old-fashioned way of finding new readers who end up adoring her and her books’ colorfully alternative and refreshingly contemporary themes. And because Like Son’s protagonist is a transgender (Trace Elements focused on lesbian characters), a girl born Francisca Cruz who morphs into a guy named Frank, Lemus has become a literary darling wtih gay and lesbian readers.

Not that Like Son is at all a coming-out story or what it’s like to be a transgender. Lemus’ concern is her characters and their perception of 'place in the world' and our inseverable connections to our family’s past. (Hence the title: like father, like son). When Frank’s lonely father dies, he leaves thirty-year-old Frank with nothing more than questions and with a photograph of Nahui Olin, a striking bohemian avant garde artist of 1920's Mexico with bewitching eyes who had a past with Frank’s paternal grandmother back in Mexico. As Frank’s life story unravels through Lemus’ honed craft of cool, yet highly descriptive prose with outbursts of witty elbow jabs of snarky humor, we learn about Frank parents’ love for each other before their ugly separation. We witness Frank literally pick himself up from the floor to flee to New York after nursing his father prior to his death—only to fall deeply in love with Nathalie, an East Village vixen as wild as Nahui who’s got a bad case of commitment phobia.

The sometimes cruel, sometimes sweet (isn’t that love?) story between Frank and Nathalie is what will keep you in this hard-to-walk-away from novel, and for Mexican history nerds like me, learning about the fierce Nahui Olin (I now have a new figure for my goddess shrine) was candy in itself.

Nahui’s described in the book like this:

Unlike that peasant faker Frida Kahlo with her hair in braids---that poor little injured bird, that mild wild girl---unlike her, Nahui was the real thing. She was serious dynamite. Frida’s husband Diego told Naui as much himself. As did Edward Weston when he took her portrait.

That very Weston photograph graces the book’s cover and is as seducing as this novel. It isn’t easy to seamlessly sew a story with a historical icon at its center into a contemporary tale of everyday kind of love set in post 9/11 downtown New York.  Oh but,  si se puede.  Bravo, Felicia.

Be sure to stock all this author’s work on your shelves and must read lists. Her bibliography can be found on her fun website: felicialunalemus.com

Posted by Adriana V. Lopez on February 21, 2008 | Comments (0)