We Heard it When We Were Young by Chuy Renteria

Abstract

Reviewed by: We Heard it When We Were Young by Chuy Renteria Jessica Tebo Chuy Renteria, We Heard it When We Were Young. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2021. 218 pp. $16.00 (paper). In his debut memoir, We Heard it When We Were Young (2021), Chuy Renteria refers to his writing process as "like walking a tightrope" (202). This sense of balance, which is a skill that he physiologically employs as a bboy (or break dancer), permeates the entire memoir as he skillfully navigates the fraught responsibilities of representation. Renteria's recounting of his childhood growing up as a first-generation Mexican American in West Liberty, the first majority-Hispanic town in Iowa, is simultaneously a critical look at small-town America and a deeply personal self-examination of the effects of internalized racism in his life and in the lives of his friends and family. Renteria's account deliberately complicates the puff pieces that celebrate West Liberty as a model of diversity in the Midwest: "These puff pieces are hard to reconcile to the climate and animosity we felt as kids. It's tough. We want to celebrate and our town is more than willing to do so" (60). For Renteria, who is concurrently concerned with the inadequacy of language, "diversity" becomes problematic when it is leveraged as a feelgood buzzword to hide underlying problems. While Renteria does not shy away from revealing the problems of West Liberty and his complicated childhood there, he also exercises great compassion for the community. His friends and family, though far from perfect, are never beyond redemption, but Renteria does not rush readers towards resolution—he forces his audience to sit and wrestle with the complicated legacy of West Liberty. We Heard It departs from the linear narrative structure of a traditional Bildungsroman. The memoir is divided into five parts (including the epilogue) that feel more like long essays than chapters. The first, "Welcome to West Liberty," not only introduces readers to the town but also (and more importantly) to Renteria's relationship with his father, which was complicated by language barriers and how he internalized the way "people treated our parents like they were beneath them" (28). "Part Two: Fistfights and Quinceañeras" addresses another difficult familial relationship: the physically violent struggle between Renteria and his older sister, Nancy. In this section, Renteria acknowledges the gendered differences between his childhood and his sister's. In "Part Three: Lessons in B-Boying," Renteria's voice is confident and hopeful as he describes his entry into the world of break-dancing. [End Page 113] By the end of the section, however, Renteria reminds readers that "life doesn't always follow the narratives you see in the movies or read in the books. It can be senseless and brutal" (178). The following section, "Part Four: What Bonds Us Together," expounds upon this statement as things almost completely fall apart for Renteria as he struggles with an eating disorder while witnessing his parents' marital struggles. Renteria's boyhood friendships are important to all four of these sections and provide a common thread for readers to follow throughout the memoir. The West Liberty that emerges from these four sections is less of a solid place and more of a network of relationships that allow Renteria to freely explore its tangled intersectionalities of race, gender, and class. His mapping of West Liberty imitates the erratic and impulsive wanderings of a group of adolescent boys on bikes fighting off boredom. The memoir is difficult to track at times, but Renteria's thematic approach also lends itself to a sense of universality that might work well in an advanced high school class or even a college literature course for freshmen. While We Heard It is certainly place-based, Renteria also discusses bullying, eating disorders, teen pregnancy, familial conflict, and alcoholism—issues that can cross cultural boundaries and that all ultimately lead back to the two questions that Renteria poignantly asks himself: Did I have a good childhood and am I a good person? Renteria does not decisively answer either of these questions. Instead, he reflects: I want to convey what it was like to be a little kid...