Growing Through the Ugly begins: "This is my first day of being dead but I want to return to my abuelita's house." Even though the protagonist, Buzzy Digit, a child-turned-soldier, is dead, his memory is still alive. In lyrical, colorful, and haunting prose, drawing on elements of magic realism, we are transported to the 1960s town of El Paso, Texas, where we relive Buzzy's memories of his life with his extended family on the border between Mexico and America. The border where people speak two languages.
Abandoned first by his father, then by his mother, and growing up in an erotically charged household filled with cousins, aunts, and uncles, Buzzy's world is defined by loss, loneliness, and sexual confusion. Eventually Buzzy falls in love with his destructive cousin Red, and finds that his only escape from the claustrophobia of home is what might make him a hero--or kill him: the war in Vietnam.
- ISBN10 0393039633
- ISBN13 9780393039634
- Publish Date 17 February 1997
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 23 October 2012
- Publish Country US
- Imprint WW Norton & Co
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 224
- Language English