56 pages • 1 hour read
Brando SkyhorseThe Madonnas of Echo Park
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Yo Soy el Army”
Chapter 5 is narrated through the voice of Manny Jr., the brother of Efren Mendoza. A retired gangster, Manny Jr. is adapting to civilian life, and to the changes of his gentrified neighborhood. For example, he has begrudgingly adjusted to his son Juan’s favorite lunch spot: a coffee shop called Membo’s, which is owned by a white man and used to be a Vietnamese restaurant, which was owned by the family of Juan’s former girlfriend, Tran. Manny recalls that his son went through a phase of dating Asian women. He notes that Ofelia, his deceased wife, would love that Juan recently married a Mexican-American girl, Angie. Ofelia would not love that her son has joined the army, and Manny feels conflicted throughout his Membo’s lunch with Juan, knowing this conversation is his last chance to talk him down before he leaves for training.
Manny describes Ofelia as smart and fierce, with “a PhD in insulting your ass” (93). A Chicano Studies graduate dedicated to “La Raza,” Ofelia was strongly averse to Juan’s relationship with Tran, claiming that Asian women only want to date white men. Ofelia attempted to steer Juan toward a relationship with a local Mexican-American teller at her bank named Duchess, but Juan continued to fight against Ofelia’s discriminatory attitudes toward interracial relationships. Manny attempted to diffuse the fighting by going to the Vietnamese family restaurant, Saigon Falls, to have a talk with Tran’s father, Phoc.
At the restaurant, Manny and Phoc bonded over their mutual respect and mixed feelings toward home. Tran and Juan continued to date throughout college, confronting prejudice whenever they went out together. Manny, however, observed the two of them making dumplings together before a New Year’s party at Saigon Falls and felt touched by their tenderness. He was disappointed when Juan replaced Tran with Angie, and Saigon Falls was replaced with Membo’s.
Back in the present moment at Membo’s, Manny notices the daughter of a black and Asian couple. He longingly reflects that his son could’ve had a daughter like that. The young girl also triggers a memory of playing dominos with his own father. Annoyed that Manny Jr. was winning the game, his father half-jokingly threatened to kill him, confessing that he shot a three-year old girl (Alma Guerrero) in a drive-by, so he was capable of shooting his own son.
Juan gives his father a drawing of Angie that Duchess made and wanted Angie to have. On the back of the drawing is a letter Juan wrote to Angie. Juan cryptically explains, “This is my last letter. This way I don’t have to write each letter like it’s my last” (101). Juan tells his father that he can read the letter, suggesting that he wants his father to read it. Manny, however, is confused and bewildered by the gesture.
Chapter 5 Analysis
Chapter 5 examines the complex performance of Mexican-American masculinity through Manny Jr.’s experiences. On one hand, Manny Jr. identifies himself as a strong, tough man who was part of a gang, and he bemoans the emasculating changes to his now-gentrified neighborhood. Manny Jr. recognizes, however, that his father’s toxic masculinity has traumatized both himself and his community, and has led to the death of Alma Guerrero, and his own hypervigilance as a criminal. He also accounts for the damaging effects his masculinity has had on his son, acknowledging that the “untold number of late nights I stumbled home drunk and punched Juan […] to teach him to always be prepared to be attacked” (103) may have contributed to Juan’s self-destructive desire to join the army.
Faced with his need (and inability) to apologize to his son, Manny Jr.’s chapter revisits the theme of culpability and apology. Indeed, Juan’s “last letter”—which he even invites his father to read—can be read as a kind of cry for help, a plea for an apology. Manny Jr.’s failure to verbalize this apology, however, demonstrates the deep rift between his first-generation immigrant experience and the perspective of his second-generation immigrant son. Manny Jr. gestures to this rift when he observes the young multiracial girl with her parents at Membo’s: “She could have been my grandchild […] loved by those who didn’t know how to love those who made her” (100).
Chapter 5 also examines Manny Jr.’s complicated feelings and perspectives on interracial relationships. Though Manny Jr. resents Ofelia’s prejudice against Asian-Americans, he acknowledges that part of his resentment stems from his petty own desire to contradict her devotion to “La Raza” (and his own lack of connection to the Mexican-American community she seeks to elevate). Manny Jr. also bonds with Juan’s Vietnamese girlfriend, Tran, and is distressed when the gentrification in Echo Park displaces her family’s restaurant, Saigon Falls. He recognizes, however, that mixed-race families are a part of the new wave of gentrifying residents, and that this kind of development could be positive for the neighborhood.
