How to Date a Flying Mexican: New and Collected Stories is a collection of stories written by Daniel A. Olivas and contains fables of Chicano/a and Mexican culture. He is the grandson of Mexican immigrants and his parents, being proud Chicano themselves, encouraged him to explore the dynamics of Mexican and Chicana/o culture. Olivas is what you’d call a ‘triple threat,’ being that he is an author, playwright, and senior attorney with the California Department of Justice. You can find more work written and edited by Daniel Olivas on his website.
Olivas intertwines Chicana/o and Mexican culture and history such as gods, curanderismo, education, immigration, and many other important factors into each story. The flawless incorporation of these two identities mixed with the peculiar characters in magical plots makes for memorable and quirky tales. Olivas also uses his artistic voice, and I’m sure some of that attorney-like quip, to confront the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies. The story that stuck with me is titled, “The Fox” because the ending was far from happy and I took away an interesting cautionary tale. Some of my honorable mentions are “After the Revolution,” “La Queenie,” and “Los Otros Coyotes.”
In “The Fox,” we follow a woman who happily lives by herself caring for her goat on her farm. The townspeople at the other end of the peninsula view this woman as strange. They are aghast at her preference to not interact with them and remark that one day she will need someone to make her happy. After the murder of her goat, the grief-stricken woman is forced to go into that town to barter for a new one. She succeeds while also catching the eye of the man she bartered with, and they eventually marry. Everyone is happy that the woman integrated into their town and they chided themselves for thinking such cruel things about her. However, this happiness is temporary.
Her marriage heads into a rapid decline and her husband becomes cruel. As you can imagine, the townspeople revert back to gossiping; this time, about the woman’s failing marriage. The woman reminisces about the times when she felt less lonely living by herself with her goat, a time when she was also safer. Marriage can be a type of death for women, but a happily single woman is hardly ever accepted by society either; even when she does marry, the judgment and gossip only evolve. In the Latina/o/e/x community, there is a lot of pressure and expectations for women to marry and that they should want to go into motherhood. Some women don’t see that life for themselves, so when being forced or expected to, it is like a death of her individuality and the life she originally envisioned for herself. In another life, I hope the woman in “The Fox” is happily living back on her farm with just her and her goat.
Something I found very endearing about How to Date a Flying Mexican is the fact that Olivas chose the title partially because it is one of his late father’s favorite stories. He speaks highly of his father, who also had literary ambitions, and how ecstatic they both were with Olivas’s success as an author. It’s really heartwarming to see others honor their family members through their accomplishments. The realization your parents had dreams of their own always comes with the wonder if they were able to accomplish them or set them aside in order for you to reach yours. That being said, the fact that his stories are filled with rich, cultural history and identities mixed with an homage to his father makes reading this novel a little more special. It was an honor to step into his strange, little world.
Melissa Gonzalez (she/her) is a UCLA graduate with a major in American Literature & Culture and a minor in Chicana/o & Central American Studies. She loves boba, horror movies, and reading. You can spot her in the fiction, horror/mystery/thriller, and young adult sections of bookstores. Though she is short, she feels as tall as her TBR pile. You can find Melissa on her book Instagram: @floralchapters
