The Trope of Listening

An Ear For Fear: The Dialectic Of Recognition, Narcissism And The Trope Of Listening In Oscar Zeta Acosta’s The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo

Many of the great characters in twentieth century American literature possess an innate desire for recognition, which they, and subsequently the author, work mightily to register via the audial field.  From Piri Thomas yelling, “‘Hey, World—here I am.  Hallo, World—this is Piri.  That’s me’” (ix), from the rooftops of Spanish-Harlem in the opening lines of Down These Mean Streets[1] to Oscar Zeta Acosta desperately seeking recognition from the police, not to mention publishers, doctors, psychiatrists and magistrates, in The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo; the all-too-often marginalized voice comes screaming off the printed page, demanding our attention as readers.  Unfortunately, the respective institutions of power in Acosta’s memoir fail to listen to him during crucial moments throughout his life.  Similarly, but perhaps more consequentially, most critics and literary scholars fail to appreciate Acosta’s use of the audial field and, more importantly for my immediate argument, neglect to acknowledge the role of listening in the process of recognition.

The desire for recognition captivates Oscar—the narrator in The Autobiography, whom I will distinguish from the author by using the first name.  Such desire motivates him to embark on a journey, which takes the Chicano lawyer from the San Francisco Bay area, through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, by Ketchum, Idaho, and, ultimately, into Juarez, Mexico.  Along the way, the self-proclaimed brown buffalo stampedes across the west in search of recognition.  Some individuals hear him.  Hunter S. Thompson, for one, listens to the screams of “the banshee” as he refers to Acosta in a Rolling Stone article.  In The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo, Thompson, under the pseudonym “King,” represents one of the few individuals willing to listen to Oscar:

The last thing King said to me as the huge Greyhound pulled up was, ‘Listen…I don’t know if I’m responsible…sonofabitch, I feel it.  You fucking lawyers came out here to the country…it’s not much different than the city.  There’s no magic out here…anyway, fuck it.  If you get completely twisted…Jesus, I know I’ll regret this…if you come to the end of the rope…here’s my number.’ He quickly stuffed a matchbook in my hand from the Daisy Duck with his telephone number scribbled in thick, felt pen strokes. (180-181)

King demands Oscar to listen.  He is the first person in the narrative to suggest that Oscar join the Chicano movement burgeoning in Los Angeles.  In return for hearing him out, King offers to listen to Oscar if and when no one else will.  Of course, when Oscar tries to call King from Mexico, a “little kid who told me his name was Jose said King had gone to New York” (190).  King’s absence reminds the reader of Dr. Serbin, who listens to Oscar for years only to turn a deaf ear on his patient during that crucial day when Oscar experiences the nervous breakdown, which serves as the formative and catalyzing moment at the beginning of the narrative: “‘It’s blood, God damn it!  Blood, do you hear?’ I scream at my shrink.  But of course when I have positive proof, direct evidence such as this, my psychiatrist is busy with some other nut” (25).  While Dr. Serbin has lent an ear to Oscar in the past, on this day when Oscar believes he can prove the existence of his chronic ulcer—which in the context of the text and Oscar’s life is crucial—the psychiatrist refuses to listen to Oscar because he is with another patient.  Oscar’s quest for recognition in this moment seems to follow a path of one-step-forward, two-steps-back as individuals such as King and representatives of institutional power such as Dr. Serbin, to whom Oscar turns during crucial moments in his life, continue to disappoint and frustrate him.

Though he fails to recognize the trope of listening in The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo, Rafael Pérez-Torrez does refer to Acosta’s use of the audial field.  In Mestizaje, a critical text about the formation of a hybrid Chicano subjectivity, Pérez-Torrez argues that Acosta, along with Lorna Dee Cervantes and Sandra Cisneros, lends a legitimating voice to this unique subjectivity.  He goes on to describe Acosta’s use of sound in the conclusion of the author’s second publication, The Revolt Of The Cockroach People:

The narrative imagines resurrection: the mortal finality of ‘Goodbye, ese’ juxtaposed with the war cry ‘Viva la Raza!’ But the resurrection is purely rhetorical.  Acosta seeks to give voice again to the mestizo body—exhumed, deceased, disassembled.  This voice can only be heard within the register of a Chicano nationalist discourse.  Beyond death, however, despite Acosta’s most fervent wish, nothing sounds but an airless, silent void. (68)

Acosta and Pérez-Torres register Chicano subjectivity in the audial field, though according to the latter, that field remains constrained by a nationalist discourse, outside of which “this voice” is silenced by an airless void.  We can hear Acosta’s voice fade as various institutional powers represented by the likes of Dr. Serbin turn a deaf ear to Oscar’s plight in The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo.  Unfortunately, Pérez-Torres does not include a reading of Acosta’s first publication.  Nevertheless, in relegating Acosta’s voice to the confines of a nationalist discourse, Pérez-Torres acknowledges the author’s use of the audial field in The Revolt Of The Cockroach People, though he fails to recognize the trope of listening as it functions in Acosta’s work.

Not unlike Pérez-Torres, James Smethurst neglects to consider the trope of listening.  In “The Figure Of The Vato Loco And The Representation Of Ethnicity In The Narratives Of Oscar Z. Acosta,” Smethurst acknowledges the audial field as it functions in the process of recognition, pointing out how The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo is an account of Oscar’s mostly-frustrated attempt to articulate his voice:

In fact, the progression of the narrator in The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo is not, as Raymund Paredes and others have argued, from Chicano roots to unsuccessful assimilation to some sort of reconnection with an essential Chicano identity, but rather moves from a time and place where the author’s attempt to write his version of his ethnicity was continually frustrated to one where such a writing was possible. (124-125)

Lest we forget, Oscar was ready to share his story or, as Pérez-Torres would have it, his voice with the world in 1960, but publishers were unwilling to accept it:

I finished the book and the therapy about the same time, in the summer of ’60.  Luther read the book, said it was great, the story of my love affair with Alice and the fight between the Okies and the Mexicans…but, like I said, it was 1960 and no one had heard of Chicanos in those days.  I would have to wait until after the revolution before any hotshot would pay me for writing about things that mattered. (155)

In 1960, the publishing industry silences and, one could argue, castrates what will become a stalwart voice of/for a Chicano subjectivity. Only after the sixties and the Chicano movement would Oscar have the opportunity to be heard—only then would the world listen to his story. As Oscar, and readers who listen closely, come to realize, he must work to have his voice heard.  The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo represents his labor.

When discussing the dialectic of recognition, it is difficult, if not impossible, to escape G. W. Hegel’s The Phenomenology Of Mind.  For Hegel, man is self-consciousness, and thus, the desire for recognition is fundamental and exclusive to humanity, which must be recognized in order to be truly realized: “SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or ‘recognized’” (229).  Prior to the initial encounter or formative event in which a self-consciousness is recognized by an other, that consciousness can only be said to have a sense of self, which as I will argue, can lead to a psychotic narcissism in Oscar.  Only through the dialectic of recognition does self-consciousness come outside itself for itself.  Prior to the formative event, “[T]hat which for [a self-consciousness] is other stands as unessential object, as object with the impress and character of negation” (Hegel 231).  The person or “I” with a sense of self will direct his desire, and subsequent action, towards the natural world.  By negating all that exists outside itself, said “I” will destroy the objective reality and replace it with a subjective reality.  Furthermore, “I” will assume the nature of what has been negated:

If, then, the Desire is directed toward a ‘natural’ non-I, the I, too, will be ‘natural.’ The I created by the active satisfaction of such a Desire will have the same nature as the things toward which that Desire is directed: it will be a ‘thingish’ I, a merely living I, an animal I.  And this natural I, a function of the natural object, can be revealed to itself and to others only as Sentiment of self.  It will never attain Self-Consciousness. (Kojeve 4-5)

Self-consciousness must break free from the bonds of reality.  It strives, at all costs, to move beyond the natural world.  Therefore, in order to be realized, a self-consciousness must direct its desire toward another non-natural object, which can only be another self-consciousness.

Initially, the other self-consciousness is considered merely a natural object to be negated.  Again, at this point, the other stands as unessential object; but as Hegel reminds us, “the other is also a self-consciousness; an individual makes its appearance in antithesis to an individual.  Appearing thus in their immediacy [or bare fact of self-existence], they are for each other in the manner of ordinary objects” (Hegel 231).  The two individuals with only a sense of self are independent forms or “modes of consciousness that have not risen above the bare level of life (for the existent object [the other] here has been determined as life)” (Hegel 231).  Each self-consciousness, which is “primarily simple existence for self,” is suspicious of this sense of self: “[I]ts own certainty of itself is still without truth” (Hegel 232).  Hence, the self needs the other.  In order for true self-consciousness to be realized, both individuals must prove to each other and themselves “that it is not bound at all by the particularity everywhere characteristic of existence as such, and is not tied up with life” (Hegel 232).  In other words, each individual self-consciousness must abandon its natural and abstract fear of danger for freedom “comes to light” only through the risk of life.  According to Alexandre Kojeve’s reading of Hegel, which resurrected the master-slave dialectic in the twentieth century, only through what, at first, seems to be a battle-to-the-death does it become:

clear that the essential-reality of Self-Consciousness is not given-being [being that is not created by conscious, voluntary action], nor the immediate [natural, not mediated by action (that negates the given)] mode in which it first comes to sight [in the given world], nor submersion in the extension of animal-life; but that there is on the contrary, nothing given in Self-Consciousness that is anything but a passing constituent-element for it.  In other words, only by the risk of life does it come to light that Self-Consciousness is nothing but pure Being-for-itself. (Kojeve 12)

By risking life and overcoming the determinateness of reality, self-consciousness comes into being.  Of course, life must not be lost entirely, for clearly that will result in the death of consciousness.  Therefore, the individuals must overcome reality without going as far as actual death.

The initial encounter or battle, which will engender the master and the slave, entails the existence of two self-consciousnesses, without which each is left with only a sense of self.  For, as Hegel goes on to argue, the first encounter produces the dissolution of the “simple unity” of lifeless extremes, i.e. two consciousnesses, each with a suspicious sense of self, merely existent and not opposed: “[T]hrough this [event] there is posited a pure self-consciousness, and a consciousness which is not purely for itself, but for another, i.e. as an existent consciousness, consciousness in the form and shape of thinghood” (Hegel 234).  During the encounter and subsequent battle, one individual will seemingly overcome, while the other submits to, the natural fear of death, which ensues as a result of this first encounter between two human beings possessing merely a sense of self.  The person whose objective it is to overcome the determinateness of reality at all costs will be considered the master and will risk his life in order to subjugate the slave who will eventually submit to the master’s desires in order to save his mortal life.  The master will come to embody what for the slave was previously an abstract fear of danger.  As a result of the first encounter, the slave will succumb to the newfound terror of death and, thus, assume a life of servitude; however, according to Hegel and the master-slave dialectic, this terror and the servitude it entails will engender a true self-consciousness, the likes of which the master, for whom the fear of death remains merely an abstract danger, cannot attain. But the slave must first overcome himself as slave.

In order to register the process by which man ceases to be a slave, Hegel turns to the audial field.  Through his servitude, or work, the slave overcomes his fear by expressing it (and his humanity) outwardly: “Without the discipline of service and obedience, fear remains formal and does not spread over the whole known reality of existence.  Without the formative activity shaping the thing, fear remains inward and mute, and consciousness does not become objective for itself” (my emphasis, Hegel 239).  The formative activity, of course, is work, the kind of which, as I will explain, is represented by Oscar in The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo.  Indeed, voices must labor to be heard.  For Hegel, this lesson marks the second and equally formative moment in the master-slave dialectic, alluding to the trope of listening as it functions in the process of recognition.  In order to realize true self-consciousness, the slave’s fear of death, embodied in the master, and which, at this point in the dialectic, remains formal, inward and mute, must be overcome, i.e. voiced.

Up until this point in his philosophy, Hegel registers the process by which a self-consciousness is acknowledged, or recognized, strictly in terms of the visual field.  For instance, each self-consciousness “sees the other do the same as itself” (Hegel 231); self-consciousness “comes to light” (Hegel 234) or even “comes to sight” (Kojeve 12); “a human-individual comes face to face with a human-individual” (Kojeve 10); after all, “it is in and by this risk [of life] that the human reality…is shown, demonstrated, verified, and gives proofs of being essentially different from the animal, natural reality” (my emphasis, Kojeve 7).  Clearly, the master-slave dialectic, or the process by which a self-consciousness is attained, has been registered almost, if not, entirely in the visual field; however, when discussing the terror that must be overcome by the slave, Hegel shifts to the audial field, implying a trope of listening essential to the dialectic.  For, again, without the formative activity of work, i.e. without the slave’s struggle to give voice to his deepest terror, fear remains formal, inward, and most importantly for my argument, mute.

In order to be overcome, the fear, which for the slave becomes embodied as a result of the first encounter, must be voiced, which requires labor.  Just as importantly, however, the slave’s outward expression of fear must be heard, which depends on the master, in order to satisfy the slave’s desire for objective recognition. After all, the master-slave dialectic depends not only on the slave overcoming a formal, inward, and mute state of fear or terror but also on the recognition of that overcoming:

In order that mutual and reciprocal recognition, which alone can fully and definitively realize and satisfy man, be established, it suffices for the Slave to impose himself on the Master and be recognized by him.  To be sure, for this to take place, the Slave must cease to be Slave: he must transcend himself, ‘overcome’ himself, as Slave.  But if the Master has no desire to ‘overcome’—and hence no possibility of ‘overcoming’—himself as Master (since this would mean, for him, to become a Slave), the Slave has every reason to cease to be a Slave. (Kojeve 21)

According to Kojeve’s reading of Hegel, the master must listen to the slave in order to realize his humanity.  An individual with a sense of self, no matter how strong, still depends on an other, non-natural I to substantiate a true self-consciousness.  Without the reciprocal recognition from the master, the slave cannot overcome himself as slave, leading us to ask, quite rhetorically: If the proverbial tree falls in the woods, or better yet, if a brown buffalo stampedes across the western United States and into Mexico, who’s listening? For, what I am calling a trope of listening, which plays a crucial even if implied role in the master-slave dialectic, is too often neglected by the theorists who have wrestled with Hegel’s philosophy.  For example, we can examine Lacan’s mirror-stage or Levinas’s concept of the face in order to realize that the voice of humanity, as it functions in the dialectic of recognition, has been, for the most part, ignored at the expense of the image; but I am more concerned here with the trope of listening as it functions in the dialectic of recognition manifested in twentieth century American literature, and more specifically, The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo.  For, as I will now argue, Oscar seems to experience an unrelenting fear and narcissism stemming from what may be interpreted as an audial castration.

To consider the trope of listening in relation to the dialectic of recognition in The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo, we must read Oscar’s first encounter with the law as a Hegelian formative event, which creates Oscar’s subjective position as a slave in relation to institutions of power.  In high school and in love with Alice, Oscar is forced to abandon his relations with the girl after her stepfather’s irrational objections and, more importantly, the Sheriff’s castrating “No” (119). Lauren, “the giant Okie in Texas Ranger outfit” instructs Oscar’s parents, who have accompanied the police officer to Alice’s house, to take their son home.  While most literary critics of Acosta cite this passage, few, if any, discuss his parents’ silence during this formative moment in Oscar’s life: “Without another word my folks got into the car” (119).  Of course, his mother does tell Alice’s stepfather to shut up one last time before driving away, but neither parent raises their voice to the law officer in defense of their son.  Oscar hears the silence.  On the way home, he begins to laugh, reminding the reader of the “laughter of madness” that clenches Oscar’s throat earlier in the text as he turns his back and leaves Dr. Serbin’s office for the last time (42).  Additionally, Oscar’s stomach problems begin the night his parents drove him home from Alice’s house: “The wretched vomit, the gas laden belly formed within my pit when the chief of police asked me if I understood. Savvy?” (119-120).  While his ulcer may begin as a result of the chief’s lame attempt to use a Chicano colloquialism, it becomes apparent that Oscar’s physical ailment stems from the law officer’s castrating prohibition and his parents’ inability to voice a defense on his behalf.

Indeed, the terror of castration motivates Oscar’s desire to be heard throughout the narrative.  After all, he becomes a lawyer in an attempt to give himself, and those marginalized members of his community whom he represents, a voice. Describing his law degree hanging on the wall of his office, Oscar alludes to the trope of listening: “It is the emblem of my title: An Attorney and Counselor At Law!  Yes, with that number there on the wall I can address the court from the counsel table.  I will be heard, under order of the chief justice, is that clear?” (my emphasis 29).  He will be heard, and as a result, Oscar will listen to others, paying it forward without knowing it:

We’re just overburdened, mealy-mouthed, chickenshit lawyers who wouldn’t know what the hell to do with a real case if our licenses depended on it. Don’t get me wrong, we have the right motives.  Our hearts are in the right place.  It’s just that we aren’t competent.  We haven’t the guts to really take them on.  In point of fact, we aren’t lawyers, we are simply counselors of old women.  We listen to their tales because we have a mandate from Congress…and a pretty good salary to boot. (my emphasis 20-21)

As Juan Bruce-Novoa argues in “Fear And Loathing On The Buffalo Trail,” Oscar believes in the American Dream: “He even sought his piece of the pie by becoming a lawyer, only to be disenchanted by the impotence of the system” (46).  Oscar is disenchanted repeatedly by the system, be it the judicial, legal or medical institutions.  At different points in his life, various institutes of power refuse to listen to Oscar.  Even those who listen to him one moment, turn a deaf ear the next.  No matter how discouraged, however, Oscar continues to seek recognition via the audial field.

Throughout the text, Oscar has a strong sense of self, and he labors to give voice to that self.  Indeed, Oscar struggles to gain recognition from the institutional powers that be (e.g. the doctors, psychiatrists, law officers, magistrates and even publishers), but again, they refuse to listen to him during formative moments in his life.  Even at the end of the narrative, the judicial system, this time in Mexico, castrates Oscar’s voice.  Assuming he will have an opportunity to defend or explain himself, i.e. to be heard, Oscar rehearses what he will say to the magistrate:

It is very simple, your honor, I’d say.  I am an attorney.  An American citizen.  From California.  I don’t have my Bar license with me, but as you can tell from my speech, I am an educated man.  A quick phone call to the American Embassy will do.  If you don’t accept my word, that is.  But surely you can tell from…well, I know I don’t exactly look like an attorney…but you see, the hair styles are longer in San Francisco…no, of course I’m not a hippie.  I’m an attorney at law, your honor.  A member of the bar, just like you…it was just a misunderstanding…a breakdown in communication…he didn’t speak English.  He didn’t understand that I’m accustomed to heat.  I’m from sunny California. (192)

Admittedly, Oscar’s physical condition resembles anything but a lawyer at this point in the narrative; still, as he argues, his speech sounds like that of an attorney at law.  However, without his Bar License—his talisman—and, more importantly in this instance, outside of the United States, his voice is silenced.  Oscar pleads with the magistrate and with himself, referring to a due process of, what I argue to be, recognition via the audial field:

Is there no constitution here?  I wondered.  I’m charged with using bad words? Don’t they understand that I’m an attorney!  What happened to due process? Where’s the Goddamned First Amendment around here?

‘Madam, I’m an attorney…’

‘Si o no?’ she stopped me cold. Just yes or no.  That’s what it all comes down to eventually.  This is my trial.  Yes or no?

‘I am a citizen of the United States and an attorney at law, your honor,’ I said in English.

‘Well, counselor, in that case you should be able to answer questions…yes or no?’ she answered in perfect English. (193)

Even though the magistrate understands and speaks perfect English, she is unwilling to listen to Oscar’s testimony, demanding instead that he simply respond with yes or no.  Again, Oscar’s voice is castrated. Repeatedly, he desires, better yet needs, recognition from these institutes of power—one legal in the case of the magistrate, one medical in the case of Dr. Serbin, and both, as Foucault demonstrates in Discipline And Punish, united in systemic power.  Habitually frustrated, Oscar manages to move on one-step-forward, two-steps-back.

Throughout his life, Oscar comes to fetishize the listener.  Forced to share his beer with “blond-haired strangers who don’t speak my language” (121) at a party in Sun Valley, Idaho, Oscar weakly calls out to Karin, the girl with “[l]anguid, blue eyes and a perfect bust,” whom he picked up hitchhiking on the side of the road (122).  As if Oscar had “demanded her presence,” Karin focuses her entire attention on him, leading Oscar to declare, if only to himself: “I am the most important person in the whole wide world” (122).  According to Oscar’s logic, and the trope of listening as it functions in the process of recognition, he concludes that she desires him: “Didn’t she drink beer and listen to my life story for ten hours?  Didn’t she insist I call her?” (122).  Karin, like King after her, is willing to listen to Oscar, which he reads as an act of acceptance, in this case with Karin, on a most intimate level.

Still at the party in Sun Valley, Oscar is quickly distracted by Gerri, a “short, hard-faced woman” wearing a pink negligee and reminding the reader, if not Oscar, of Ruby from the Banana Ranch.  Furthermore, Gerri’s hard laugh causes Oscar to think of “Maria in Trader JJ’s” (124), upon whom he depended at one time: “Maria became one of the many women friends I always kept around to protect me from the Frisco fog and my dead vine. I never screwed any of them, I just kept them to hear me out” (46).  It seems as though Oscar more successfully attains the recognition he seeks from individuals such as King, Karin, Gerri, Ruby and Maria than from various representatives of institutional power such as Dr. Serbin, Lauren the law officer and the magistrate in Mexico.  Clearly, Oscar appreciates people who listen to him.  Just outside Ketchum, Idaho, he thinks of Ernest Hemingway:

I stared at the stars and thought of old Ernie and his corny stories about the Left Bank and all the fine wines and wonderful meals he guzzled with his lesbian friends.  I couldn’t understand why he had to go all the way to Paris to look for companionship when Karin and Gerri were just around the corner from his house in Ketchum, Idaho.  Maybe he just couldn’t take it, I thought to myself as I fell asleep. (126).

One wonders, and could assume, the same about Oscar: just why he feels as though he must leave the likes of Maria in San Francisco, not to mention his family in Riverbank, to seek companionship in Karin and Gerri of Sun Valley, Idaho, or the prostitutes of Juarez, Mexico.

While the law officers, the magistrates, the psychiatrists, the doctors and the publishers continue to ignore him, Oscar seems to flee from those individuals, such as Maria and Gerri, who recognize his humanity.  Of course, in the end, Oscar continues to receive the recognition he desires as the same individuals from whom he runs repeatedly direct him towards others who will, however fleetingly, listen to him:

‘Listen, Mr. Samoa man…I know you are on a search,’ my mother says.

‘Search, your ass.  I’m just looking for a good doctor.’

‘That’s what I mean…now when you leave here, go to Alpine.  It’s on the way.  A friend of Tibeau’s lives there.  Go to a bar called the Daisy Duck and ask the bartender for Bobby Miller.  He’ll tell you where to go from there.  Bobby knows a lot of good doctors that specialize in ulcers.  Just tell him that Mother Gerri sent you.’ (126)

Oscar listens to and follows Gerri’s advice.  Bobby Miller, of course, will introduce him to King at the Daisy Duck.  People, as well as institutions, move in and out of Oscar’s life serving as transient, acoustic mirrors.  In the end, someone is always around to hear him out.  Ultimately, his brother, Bob, picks up the phone and listens to Oscar who calls from Mexico, demonstrating how an analysis of Acosta’s use of sound and the trope of listening allows us to recognize the role that family plays in The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo, but that is for another project.

Bibliography

Acosta, Oscar Zeta. The Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo. New York: Random House, Inc. First Vintage Books Edition, 1989.

Bruce-Novoa, Juan. “Fear And Loathing On The Buffalo Trail”. MELUS. Vol. 6, No. 4. (Winter, 1979). 39-50.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Phenomenology Of Mind. trans. J. B. Baillie. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1931. Ed. J. Carl Mickelsen. University Of Idaho. 12 Oct. 2007 <http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/ToC/Hegel%20Phen%20ToC.htm>.

Kojeve, Alexandre. Introduction To The Reading Of Hegel. New York: Basic Books, 1969.

Pérez-Torres, Rafael. Mestizaje: Critical Uses Of Race In Chicano Culture. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

Smethurst, James. “The Figure Of The Vato Loco And The Representation Of Ethnicity In The Narratives Of Oscar Zeta Acosta”. MELUS. Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer, 1995). 119-132.