What do you think?
Rate this book
Latino Voices
Zigzagger: Stories
Set mainly in California's Central Valley, Manuel Muñoz's first collection of stories goes beyond the traditional family myths and narratives of Chicano literature and explores, instead, the constant struggle of characters against their physical and personal surroundings. Usually depicted as the lush and green world of rural quiet and tranquility, the Valley becomes the backdrop for the difficulties these characters confront as they try to maintain hope and independence in the face of isolation.
In the title story, a teenage boy learns the consequences of succumbing to the lure of a town outsider; in "Campo," a young farm worker frantically attempts to hide his supervision of a huddle of children from the town police, only to have another young man come to his unexpected rescue; in "The Unimportant Lila Parr," a father must expose his own secrets after his son is found murdered in a highway motel. From conflicts of family and sexuality to the pain of loss and memory, the characters in Zigzagger seek to reconcile themselves with the rural towns of their upbringing—a place that, by nature, is bordered by loneliness.
In the title story, a teenage boy learns the consequences of succumbing to the lure of a town outsider; in "Campo," a young farm worker frantically attempts to hide his supervision of a huddle of children from the town police, only to have another young man come to his unexpected rescue; in "The Unimportant Lila Parr," a father must expose his own secrets after his son is found murdered in a highway motel. From conflicts of family and sexuality to the pain of loss and memory, the characters in Zigzagger seek to reconcile themselves with the rural towns of their upbringing—a place that, by nature, is bordered by loneliness.
184 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2003
7 people are currently reading
290 people want to read
About the author
Manuel Muñoz
47 books94 followersManuel Munoz's dazzling collection is set in a Mexican-American neighborhood in central California-a place where misunderstandings and secrets shape people's lives. From a set of triplets with three distinct fates to a father who places his hope-and life savings-in the hands of a faith healer, the characters in these stories cross paths in unexpected ways. As they do, they reveal a community that is both embracing and unforgiving, and they discover a truth about the nature of home: you always live with its history. Munoz is an explosive new talent who joins the ranks of such acclaimed authors as Junot Diaz and Daniel Alarcon.Manuel Muoz is the author of one previous story collection, Zigzagger. Originally from California, he now lives in New York City."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 27, 2008
I read this collection when it first came out and there are still pieces of it that float in my brain 5 years later. The story of the father trying to get back to Mexico but needs the help of his son (who is now living with an older, rich man) haunts me. The story "Zapatos" taught me something about myself. For such a realist writer, Munoz is magical that way.
August 16, 2023
Whenever I read entire short story collections, I rate each one as Okay or Good or Great. Out of the twenty three short stories in Muñoz's collection, here are the Greats:
"Zigzagger"
"The Third Myth"
"By the Time You Get There, By the Time You Get Back"
"Good as Yesterday"
"Skyshot"
"Monkey, Sí"
I cannot explain to you all how much I love Manuel Muñoz's style and prose. Similar to Helena María Viramontes, Muñoz takes the most mundane instances and deranges them, sometimes peculiarly and sometimes with endearment. When I say that short story writers (generally) are experts at crafting ambiguous endings, Muñoz is literally my prime example. His endings focus on odd images — knife swallowing man, fireworks bursting, a mother forcibly interrogating her son's throat — and whatever meaning we think we granted to said images, Muñoz will breathe fresh air into them. You feel it on your skin.
This is a collection that centers gay chicanos in Central Valley California at the end of the twentieth century until 2003. Though, hardly do Gay chicanos take control of their narrative. In each story, we see a mother, a father, a lover, or a family somehow cope or deal or tolerate their gay son/family member. This is not a fault but a commendable wielding of narrative craft on part of Muñoz. My favorite story of the collection "Monkey, Sí" so cleverly dissects the abusive nature of narration on character exploitation. Could it be Muñoz protects these gay chicanos from narrative? I'm leaning towards no. Perhaps a relentless and unapologetic focalization on gay chicanos seemed unfathomable.
Lastly, it's an odd feeling to somehow find yourself in a book. You know those comical crime scenes on TV, where they put tape around the long-gone dead body, capturing the shape only and nothing else? I felt like that taped outline while reading. Across the collection, I saw instances of myself where we were both too different and similar. The story that hit me the most was "By the Time You Get There, By the Time You Get Back."
Until next time.
"Zigzagger"
"The Third Myth"
"By the Time You Get There, By the Time You Get Back"
"Good as Yesterday"
"Skyshot"
"Monkey, Sí"
I cannot explain to you all how much I love Manuel Muñoz's style and prose. Similar to Helena María Viramontes, Muñoz takes the most mundane instances and deranges them, sometimes peculiarly and sometimes with endearment. When I say that short story writers (generally) are experts at crafting ambiguous endings, Muñoz is literally my prime example. His endings focus on odd images — knife swallowing man, fireworks bursting, a mother forcibly interrogating her son's throat — and whatever meaning we think we granted to said images, Muñoz will breathe fresh air into them. You feel it on your skin.
This is a collection that centers gay chicanos in Central Valley California at the end of the twentieth century until 2003. Though, hardly do Gay chicanos take control of their narrative. In each story, we see a mother, a father, a lover, or a family somehow cope or deal or tolerate their gay son/family member. This is not a fault but a commendable wielding of narrative craft on part of Muñoz. My favorite story of the collection "Monkey, Sí" so cleverly dissects the abusive nature of narration on character exploitation. Could it be Muñoz protects these gay chicanos from narrative? I'm leaning towards no. Perhaps a relentless and unapologetic focalization on gay chicanos seemed unfathomable.
Lastly, it's an odd feeling to somehow find yourself in a book. You know those comical crime scenes on TV, where they put tape around the long-gone dead body, capturing the shape only and nothing else? I felt like that taped outline while reading. Across the collection, I saw instances of myself where we were both too different and similar. The story that hit me the most was "By the Time You Get There, By the Time You Get Back."
Until next time.
August 21, 2020
Subtle yet expressive, some won’t be able to empathize with the sense of isolation and alienation that weave these narratives together, but that is sort of the point. Muñoz is presenting the reader with a unique perspective and broadening some horizons. Some stories lacked characterization but Muñoz made up for it with a strong sense of place. Many of the characters are not defined by their thoughts or actions but by their environments. The landscapes he describes are characters, helping to push the plot forward and often provide conflict. For example, The Unimportant Lila Parr, when the son of a landowner is found dead we would never understand the townsfolk's suspicion, the landowners shame or his affair with Lila Parr without a description of the roadside motel and people's perception of it. This emphasis on setting is something I'd like to see more of in my own writing. It did at times get exhausting and repetitive and some of his shorter pieces, though well written, just didn’t seem finished.
February 14, 2008
I heard Munoz read from this book and I was completely transported...however the experience is not the same now that I'm reading it. still pretty good though. I think The Healer of Olive Avenue, another of his books, is the one to go for.
November 14, 2007
Manuel is a fabulous writer. I love how all these disparate stories come together to form a deep smooth melancholy sweet portrait of the Central Valley in California.
January 4, 2008
Two words: understated and lyrical. Yum!
February 26, 2009
Also has to go back to the library.
June 15, 2020
It is not easy to get right the tone, intimate as well as detached, that Manuel Munoz achieves in his debut collection 'Zigzagger'. It is something he keeps consistent all through. One might tend to classify this as gay fiction, going by the few stories of that genre, yet it manages to elude that classification too, expanding its span to identity issues, loneliness and family. Firmly rooted in the Central Valley of California, where the writer hails from, the book etches the geography as well as the way of life of the people there.
Like the title story 'Zigzagger', which begins from a father and mother staring with concern at a young boy who is recovering from convulsions, after a bad night out at a weekly dance party in their conservative town. For the majority of the town of churchgoers, Saturday is a vile day, with some of them even complaining of their "workers swaying their hips as they pick tomatoes or grapes" early in the day. We are not told about what has happened to the boy until towards the end of the story, till when we switch between the concerned parents and the events of the previous day, right from the preparation.
Something about the tone and format of this story repeats in 'Young Lila Parr'. When we begin with a distant gaze at her and are told about her struggles following her husband's untimely death, through the voice of the man next door who used to till their land once and was later given ownership of a piece of it, we assume that the story would be about her. But then, it shifts. We realise that these are the thoughts of a grieving father, whose son's body was found the previous day in a motel. We see him wishing that the death was "more respectable, like a car accident". Both these stories are marked by the sexual tension that pervades through much of the narrative.
‘By the time you get there, by the time you get back’ progresses over awkward calls from a father to a son, who is now living with a man in another city. It is later revealed that the man became a father at 15, with the young mother passing away soon after in an accident. The call being made to the son now is for some money to visit his own father, whom he hasn’t visited in ten years. He wants to have something in his hand, to give the family while returning, as well as to shield the impact while revealing his son’s sexual identity to them.
Fluid sexual identities becomes the centre point of ‘Good as yesterday’, in which 20-year old Vero is caught between the love for her brother, 15-year old Nicky, and the not-yet-faded love for 21-year old Julian, to whom Nicky is now attracted to. The story has some splendid scenes of the siblings visiting Julian, who is now in jail over a petty case. But ‘Not Nevada’ did not make for a comfortable reading with a creepy paedophilic photographer as the protagonist, despite some interesting elements involving photography.
The longing for a time gone by is the all pervading feeling in two stories - ‘Loco Billy’ and ‘Anchorage’. The latter is about an old man, dumped back on his father’s old town, or somewhere near there, by the circus company he was working for. He reminisces the memories of an old fling, during his younger days, ruing for not proceeding it with. But one wonders whether all this sense of loss which he emanates is because of the love for her, or because there is no one to take care of him in his last days. A contrast is there right next door for him, where the neighbouring family is shown bringing back their old father from Alaska.
Like the title story 'Zigzagger', which begins from a father and mother staring with concern at a young boy who is recovering from convulsions, after a bad night out at a weekly dance party in their conservative town. For the majority of the town of churchgoers, Saturday is a vile day, with some of them even complaining of their "workers swaying their hips as they pick tomatoes or grapes" early in the day. We are not told about what has happened to the boy until towards the end of the story, till when we switch between the concerned parents and the events of the previous day, right from the preparation.
Something about the tone and format of this story repeats in 'Young Lila Parr'. When we begin with a distant gaze at her and are told about her struggles following her husband's untimely death, through the voice of the man next door who used to till their land once and was later given ownership of a piece of it, we assume that the story would be about her. But then, it shifts. We realise that these are the thoughts of a grieving father, whose son's body was found the previous day in a motel. We see him wishing that the death was "more respectable, like a car accident". Both these stories are marked by the sexual tension that pervades through much of the narrative.
‘By the time you get there, by the time you get back’ progresses over awkward calls from a father to a son, who is now living with a man in another city. It is later revealed that the man became a father at 15, with the young mother passing away soon after in an accident. The call being made to the son now is for some money to visit his own father, whom he hasn’t visited in ten years. He wants to have something in his hand, to give the family while returning, as well as to shield the impact while revealing his son’s sexual identity to them.
Fluid sexual identities becomes the centre point of ‘Good as yesterday’, in which 20-year old Vero is caught between the love for her brother, 15-year old Nicky, and the not-yet-faded love for 21-year old Julian, to whom Nicky is now attracted to. The story has some splendid scenes of the siblings visiting Julian, who is now in jail over a petty case. But ‘Not Nevada’ did not make for a comfortable reading with a creepy paedophilic photographer as the protagonist, despite some interesting elements involving photography.
The longing for a time gone by is the all pervading feeling in two stories - ‘Loco Billy’ and ‘Anchorage’. The latter is about an old man, dumped back on his father’s old town, or somewhere near there, by the circus company he was working for. He reminisces the memories of an old fling, during his younger days, ruing for not proceeding it with. But one wonders whether all this sense of loss which he emanates is because of the love for her, or because there is no one to take care of him in his last days. A contrast is there right next door for him, where the neighbouring family is shown bringing back their old father from Alaska.
February 14, 2023
These stories really touched me. Muñoz is a great writer who captures the innocence of childhood, growing up, and the realization of self with such grace. I know I’m totally biased because I’m a gay Latino who grew up in a poor/lower income household (and that’s right on point with the themes in Muñoz’s work). I related so much to feeling societal pressures to act a certain way and portray a certain sense of masculinity. Muñoz does a great job at capturing these anxieties and shows how gay youths must navigate their lives.
I really appreciated how Muñoz approached sexual topics. A lot of times in gay memoirs, short stories, anything, sex is discussed very crudely or obsessively, but Muñoz only did so with intention and purpose. The story about the sister letting her brother carry on a relationship with her ex boyfriend was wild. There were sexual elements to it, but it never read as sexual because she was reliving those moments as failure and horror. You felt it when she said she didn’t know how to tell her brother his urges weren’t wrong because of gender, rather wrong because the man was wrong. Any gay can relate to falling for a guy you know you can’t have. I also related to getting picked on just for carrying myself a certain way and not living up to a certain machismo. I highly recommend this collection for anyone interested in Latinx LGBTQ+ books or coming of age stories.
I really appreciated how Muñoz approached sexual topics. A lot of times in gay memoirs, short stories, anything, sex is discussed very crudely or obsessively, but Muñoz only did so with intention and purpose. The story about the sister letting her brother carry on a relationship with her ex boyfriend was wild. There were sexual elements to it, but it never read as sexual because she was reliving those moments as failure and horror. You felt it when she said she didn’t know how to tell her brother his urges weren’t wrong because of gender, rather wrong because the man was wrong. Any gay can relate to falling for a guy you know you can’t have. I also related to getting picked on just for carrying myself a certain way and not living up to a certain machismo. I highly recommend this collection for anyone interested in Latinx LGBTQ+ books or coming of age stories.
August 13, 2017
This was a great collection of short stories, particularly great because of Munoz's ability to bring a distinctly chicano voice into light. Each story felt mythological and told as though it were fable. On top of that there is a recurring exploration of characters that find themselves at an intersection of the masculine, a competing sexuality, and the importance of myth and family. These are stories that put me into someone else's head (or maybe just a moment of their life) and made me think about the differences from my own life.
November 10, 2023
The last story was so sad. Many sad parts, funny parts, and astonishing parts. I know these are fiction, yet I feel I learned so much about the culture-the stories of gay Latinos males, in particular. I grew up in the same Central San Joaquin Valley that many of the stories are set in, I still live here. I can imagine and feel many of the moments in these stories, yet there is a lot of newness- a lot of life that I haven't experienced here and never will, good and bad.
Great collection!
Great collection!
dnf
April 4, 2022DNF @ 54%.
I liked this collection and would totally recommend it! I think it's amazingly well-written, and I especially enjoyed the micro-stories; they read a lot like prose poetry piece. Just DNF'd it for now because I read it for school and I didn't have time to finish it with all the other readings/work piling up. But I think I'll keep my copy and might return to it in the future.
I liked this collection and would totally recommend it! I think it's amazingly well-written, and I especially enjoyed the micro-stories; they read a lot like prose poetry piece. Just DNF'd it for now because I read it for school and I didn't have time to finish it with all the other readings/work piling up. But I think I'll keep my copy and might return to it in the future.
February 18, 2020
Amazing stories dealing with identity, sexuality, and family.
May 23, 2023
This one hurt, the pain the connected stories with different struggles that transcend them. It’s great
September 16, 2023
superb, beautiful, exquisite
May 6, 2018
Technically, I'm re-reading this for about the 3rd time. One of my favorite authors--incredibly deft with plot, character development, and language.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews