Let Their Spirits Dance
 Stella Pope Duarte
 (Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
 2002 Rayo/HarperCollins
 ISBN: 0060186372

After hearing her dead son's voice, a Chicano matriarch takes her family on a pilgrimage to the Vietnam War Memorial.

“Chicanos, half Aztec, half European, hearts pounding, warriors from the past, sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli, god of war, were writing their names in blood so the sun could be fed and move over into tomorrow. That was Vietnam for us, for the Mexicas of Aztlán, la gente de razon, as Don Florencio would say.” (Page 58)

Jesse A. Ramirez was killed in action in Viet Nam on June 7, 1968. His mother Alicia, & his sister Teresa have learnt in the 30 years since they met his flag-draped casket at the airport, to live with the pain. Each in their own way they have curled up around their grief. The mother never sang again & the sister went on an anti-war binge before settling down & marrying a musician who survived his tour in Vietnam by being a mechanic in the car pool. Both mother & daughter struggle in marriages that are less than perfect, with men who seek comfort elsewhere.

Teresa takes us into her raza world where she teaches in an elementary school dedicated to one of their own who died in Viet Nam; of a holy man who lived in parallel universes & gave her great healing when she needed it most; where the Arizona barrios are peopled with devout Catholics & displaced souls yearning for their ancestors; of school dreams & the draft of the young Chicanos for the war on the other side of the world; of the letters a brother sent home to a sister; of the bright, shining medals that is all everyone now has of their dearly beloved Jesse; of brawls in bars, mistresses on the side, children coming of age, & sisters squabbling, always squabbling.

Until that Christmas when Jesse's ever-mourning mother hears her son's voice, & life takes on another dimension. & when a letter arrives from the military, explaining how, all those years ago, they'd made a mistake & now owe the family of Jesse A. Ramirez ninety thousand dollars, it all becomes crystal clear to Senora Ramirez. In a whirlwind of inspired energy she herds her diaspored children & their children into a convoy of autos, to set out from Phoenix, Arizona into the sunrise, so she can fulfill la manda, the promise to touch her son's name upon the Wall, & know some peace.

Before they all leave, Teresa's brilliant nephew sets up a Web site, & America begins to follow along on the pilgrimage. As they drive, they gather up Jesse's troubled military buddies, passing through New Mexico into Colorado before setting off across the Great Plains, where they encounter a very different America.

“We're pilgrims of Aztlán, heading east, following the rising sun, on our own quest, una munda, searching out an invisible trek in a maze of voices calling, prayers, magical words, singsong chants of the ancient world, good wishes, broken promises, pain, traveling through the whiteness of Aztlán. My Mother, the beginning of it all, is blind to all she's done. We're pilgrims on a journey to America's wailing wall. Only faith will get us there.” (Page 157)

Meanwhile, someone from Little Saigon in California has made contact. & when they finally meet in Washington, Thom, the girl Jesse wrote about who was teaching him Vietnamese, at last finds her son's & grandson's American family.

Let Their Spirits Dance is an intensely satisfying, many-layered story of one family's journey toward reconciliation & hope.

I too have made that pilgrimage to touch my friends' names -- boys who left when I was new to this land. My Beloved is a Vietnam Veteran & we walk in our community's Military Cemetery & offer our prayers for his fallen fellow Warriors.

Let Their Spirits Dance is a wonderfully American read, rich in the heritage of the Mexicas of Aztlán; of bewildered families whose men have gone to war, come back as dead heroes or the living wounded. In the mystical magic of all pilgrimages, the journey takes each relative & brother-in-arms out of their small lives & gives them a time of collective purpose that will bring them back together & heal their scars.

Let Their Spirits Dance is profoundly emotional, deeply spiritual & intensely rewarding.

For a photo album of Jesse's time & the power of the Wall, do check out David Chananie's Not Yet At Ease

Stella Pope Duarte also has a book of stories: Fragile Night
(10/19/03)

Rebecca