Abstract
‘Flashes of imagery’, the phrase coined by Hoffman (2004) to describe the method by which memory can manifest itself, is a paradigm that also aids an understanding of the mechanics of memory for the American-Latino writer and scholar, Fred Arroyo. His collection of autobiographical essays, Sown In Earth: Essays of Memory and Belonging published in January 2020 provide a first-hand account of his memories of childhood and adolescence.
The fragmentary ‘flashes of imagery’ throughout the four sections depict scenes from Arroyo’s dysfunctional childhood, his relationship to his father and his father’s relationship with alcohol, but also his father’s complex emotions and perspective on his position within American society as a Latino working class man. By working through his own trauma, Arroyo explores the trauma of his father and how his experience, understood with greater clarity from the position of hindsight, acts as a metaphor for the wider working-class Latino community of that specific generation.
As a result, a web of cause and effect becomes apparent. Childhood memories, experiences and traumas clearly affect Arroyo’s later life and his emotions provide a raw exposé of the complexity of memory and its stain upon all aspects of life. The experiences Arroyo presents stand as autonomous instances and can be understood as such. Their structure, however, does enable a rough narrative arc to form. Collected as ‘flashes of imagery’, each fragment is placed in relation to space and time, although these categorisations become more vague as the arc progresses. As each fragment unfolds, the intention of presenting a testimony is also made clear. Each fragment is a physical manifestation of Arroyo’s bearing witness to the traumas of his childhood, such as the physical abuse suffered at the hand of his father and mother but also the emotional trauma surrounding the feeling of not belonging, not knowing how to please his father and gain his approval, not knowing how to mend and progress the relationship between himself and his father, and a desire to assume the conventional roles of father and son where a mutual respect is present.
In widening the analysis of the long term effects of trauma, Arroyo also acknowledges the need to bear some kind of witness, albeit obliquely, to the personal traumas of his father. These include his father’s sense of not belonging and not being able to settle into his role as a family man and as a working Latino man in American society. Whilst working through each section, an intertextual link forms to Philip Roth’s (1991) memoir Patrimony in which Roth recounts the demise and death of his father from a brain tumour. Within the memoir, Roth also recounts the relationship between himself and his father, and testifies through the medium of memory and recollection of the successes and difficulties of their relationship. Both Roth and Arroyo have different reasons for their testimonies and the need to bear witness, but both share the need to try and understand the complexities of their respective fathers from the benefit of hindsight and perspective when more rational judgements can be sought. Both also examine the wider collective memory of a specific social group – for Roth the Newark Jewish community in which his father lived and worked, for Arroyo the Latino community in which his father mixed and felt most comfortable – and the connection between familial memory and the wider cultural narrative of these communities.
Split into four sections, with each collection of fragments arranged with some relation to the relevant time and space within the chronology of Arroyo’s childhood, Arroyo indulges his reader by inviting them to walk back through these significant events and memories as each sensory detail is recovered and considered. Laub’s (1995) extensive research on witnessing and the importance of testimony is worth considering here. All three of Laub’s ‘levels’ of witnessing are employed within the narrative, ‘the level of being a witness to oneself within the experience, the level of being a witness to the testimonies of others, and the level of being a witness to the process of witnessing itself’(p. 61). Arroyo is able to recollect these memories and experiences but acknowledge the implications of this action from the perspective of adulthood and how this affects his testimony. He also acknowledges implications of the recording of the testimony in the form of a fragmented narrative and the impact this has on the reader’s understanding and perception of the testimony. The reader acts as the witness to the testimony of the other, Arroyo, and it is possible to witness this act in play between the witness and the listener.
Equipped with recurring themes, such as desperation, loneliness, abuse, displacement, and abandonment that pervade the rest of the narrative, the first section ‘85 Reed Avenue’ focuses on recollections from the family home in Hartford, Connecticut. From the freedoms of playing in the graveyard next to the house, to the conflicting images of his father and the flux of his mental and physical stability, the importance of the connection between space and memory become apparent. The house is the ultimate paradox: the space where happy recollection is directed, and laughter is heard among the strangers visiting his father, but also the place where the physical abuse, punishment, and misunderstanding takes place. The physical scars, the ‘calligraphy’ of the lines imprinted within his back by the belt are an integral part of his testimony in this section. The recall of memory through the physical trauma, traced through the grooves of the body is harrowing and even more present in further sections of the text.
The second part ‘Michigan’, much like the third ‘Island’, is a further collection of memories from Arroyo’s time living in Michigan with his family unit and visits with his father to Puerto Rico. Examples of his father’s abuse towards the young Arroyo constitute a large amount of the testimony in these sections. What is notable about the second section in particular is how these recollections are analysed with the benefit of time and maturity, ‘my father was always filled with a rage I didn’t understand’ (p. 73). He considers his father’s actions and emotions from the benefit of time and working through the trauma, recognising that his father did not understand the psychological rationale of his emotions either. Throughout the second and third parts of this collection, Arroyo acknowledges the sense of loss, displacement and frustration that his father exhibits through his physical actions. All of these feelings are oblique, referenced in what is not said throughout the recollections. Both complement each other, and both show the danger of trying to live the present in the mirror image of the past and the subsequent repercussions on the sense of self.
The fourth part of the collection examines Arroyo’s later life and how childhood experiences and memories still affect life after leaving home. The process of becoming a writer is explored and how memory and experience informs Arroyo’s writing. Arroyo’s recollections and flashes of memory, his testimony, are fused with literary allusion and one such example is the recollection of the fascination with the writer Jim Harrison. The need for a father figure is also present here, in a literary and emotional sense, and the desperation for advice from Harrison as well as his ‘blessing’ to write is poignant. The void from childhood of not having a ‘father figure’ in the conventional sense must be filled by something meaningful. However, it is when Arroyo overcomes this need for approval from Harrison that the true breakthrough in Arroyo’s testimony is realised, emphasised in fragments in the latter part of this section. Once Arroyo realises that he does not need the approval he so desperately sought in his formative years, he is able to ‘possess the past’ as Nabokov (2000) is able to through the action of writing and using language to preserve a version of the past in his memoir Speak, Memory. Like Nabokov, Arroyo’s discourse centres itself in the context of space and how space, specifically location, can elicit recollection to help construct the testimony. Again, like Nabokov and Roth, through bearing witness to the traumas of his childhood Arroyo is able to start to take ownership of the specific traumas by utilising the medium of language to bear witness, therefore taking control of memories and recollections that he had previously been powerless to influence.
This collection does not make for easy reading. There are fragments, particularly towards the end of the first section that are harrowing and difficult, made so because of the clarity of the language used in recalling the event for the testimony. This enables the reader to feel even closer to the testimony being given and the intimacy between Arroyo and the reader creates the effect of a conversation – he is speaking directly to you, his listener. This characteristic of the prose is a defining feature of the work as a whole. Arroyo is sharing his testimony with us for a reason – to convey the images of memory that have left a lasting impression on him, good or bad and how these images have helped him work through certain traumas from childhood more generally.
As a reader, it is a privilege to be invited to listen to this testimony, particularly when relating this action back to Laub’s second level of witnessing. With copious examples of elegant, carefully written prose throughout, Arroyo substantiates the importance of familial memory and experience on the wider cultural narrative of memory. The individual’s experience helps to highlight certain aspects of the shared cultural experience of the many. As a text for assessing the benefits of working through trauma and of utilising testimony as a means of that working through, this is a necessary consideration. As a text for considering the wider collective memory of the Latino-US experience in the latter half of the twentieth century, this is a vital consideration. Many would benefit from the inclusion of this work on course syllabuses in the future.