Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

“Monarchs, I tell him, remind me of my home and of my family. ‘But I thought you hated home and your family,’ he says. ‘But I love them too,’ I say.”

This quote describes The Challenges of Family Dynamics because of his violent, tumultuous upbringing. Despite this, he feels compelled to return to them in Michoacán, much like the monarch butterflies that remind him of home migrate back there every spring.

“There’s nothing like a bus ride out of town after a lovers’ quarrel to make a person sentimental about getting home to family.”

In this quote, Rigoberto expresses part of the appeal for him of returning to Mexico to see his family. Although life for him there is difficult, it is an escape from the relationship he is in. The term “lover’s quarrel” minimizes the violence of the relationship, representing how Rigoberto hasn’t yet entirely reckoned with the reality of the abuse, although he later will.

“How I wished for the days to be old enough to go away and never have to suffer pain like this. As I walk into the living room again I know I haven’t ventured very far because I’m back. And I keep going back.”

Upon his return to his paternal grandfather’s home, Rigoberto almost immediately gets into an argument with his father. This quote represents the ambivalence Rigoberto has about his family. Physically, he has distanced himself from them, but mentally and emotionally, he is still connected to them and feels drawn to them, even though it results in conflict. It also evokes a sense of a cycle, as Rigoberto continually leaves and returns, highlighting The Cyclical Nature of Violence in Relationships.

“I scurry out from under the stage to find my father and I’m surprised that he isn’t looking for me. An anxious gaze distorts my face as I consider waving my arm to get my father’s attention, but I know this won’t work because he’s too distracted at the moment. My father keeps his smile fixed on the audience—his mouth, all teeth, all satisfaction, all bliss. Is that my father? I ask myself. And the answer fills me with a wonder I have never experienced before.”

One of the key sources of ambivalence for Rigoberto in his relationship with his father is the way in which his father is popular, even beloved, by those outside of his family, whereas he feels neglected and ignored by him. His father is more interested in—and happier with—the adulation of the crowd than in taking care of his son. Rigoberto González uses the naïve perspective of his childhood self, filled with “wonder” at the existence of his father, to evoke pathos for the neglected subject.

“‘You said you were going to pay for my ticket. And I’m going second class, so I bought one for you as well. Aren’t we traveling together? Here, I saved you some money. Can I borrow it until we get to Michoacán?’ Unbelievable, I think as I shake my head. My father has done it to me again. But I let it go. It’ll be my give to his take this time.”

This quote indirectly characterizes Rigoberto’s father’s as untrustworthy. He is something of a scam artist who doesn’t take Rigoberto’s desires into consideration and uses him for financial gain. Rigoberto is frustrated that he continues to fall for his father’s schemes, but he realizes that this is one way he can maintain power and control in the relationship. The binary of “give” and “take” exemplifies the harmful power dynamics that González explores between himself and others in the text.

“Regardless, I feel a sense of renewal each time I depart, as if whatever has happened up to then could be left behind like belongings too bulky to take along. I look forward to emerging from the bus at the last stop, stretching out my arms to a new beginning.”

A motif in Butterfly Boy is travel as a way to escape. This quote refers literally to Rigoberto’s travel to Michoacán, but it is also an expression of Rigoberto’s hope for his life in general; he seeks to leave the violence and pain of the past behind, mentally by physically distancing himself from them.

“I was saddened by my mother’s sense of helplessness because I knew she was trying her best. It was my father who made no effort to be patient, or to at least recognize that my mother was capable if not able. My father didn’t necessarily subscribe to the stereotypical sexist notions of the Mexican male, but he was somewhat of a stereotype himself: he drank, stayed out late, and came home penniless, the sullen drunk, to ask for my mother’s forgiveness.”

In this quote, Rigoberto describes more of his father’s character and gives insight into the gender norms and expectations of the community in which he was raised. He also demonstrates how his mother was treated when she tried to subvert those expectations, in this case by attempting to learn how to drive.

“The poetry of his seduction is irresistible. And the stupid young man will let him sit next to him and never leave, not even when the boyfriend kicks his shin beneath the all-concealing table cloths at fancy restaurants he’d never afford with his student budget. But he will learn about wines, Italian desserts, and condiments so tasty and exotic they’re like portals into other parts of the world. But there will also be the backhand to the chest on the car ride home, and the painful words: stupid ignorant farmworker, dumb-ass sissy greaser, beaner cunt. And at night he will reel himself back into favor by appealing to the young man’s most sensitive part of his soul—his memory.”

González is describing his lover’s character and how his lover takes advantage of vulnerable young, gay Chicano men such as himself. In this quote, González reveals how the abuse he endured in the relationship was verbal as well as physical, while also describing what kept him in the relationship despite the abuse: the access to the upper-class opportunities and the cultivated intimacy. González juxtaposes sensuous luxury with the harsh, stark language used by his lover such that the appeal of the former is heightened by the shock of the latter.

“My father, the farmworker and cosmonaut, floats out into space with his back turned to the world, his face looking fearlessly into the great abyss of things mysterious, unknown, and new.”

While Rigoberto has a lot of resentment toward his father, he has a deal of sympathy for him as well, as seen in this quote. Rigoberto recognizes that his father has had a very hard life and seeks his own forms of escape from it. González uses the ethereal language of science fiction to convey his father’s sense of the appeal of escape.

“My mother contemplated the two paths before them for a few seconds. The roads were dark and neither gave any hint about where it was heading. My mother said it really didn’t matter. Both roads were going north. Since she was pregnant and an undocumented alien, she only wanted to make sure that her child was born a U.S. citizen. Any city would do.”

In a literal sense, this quote is a description of the realities of Chicano migrants seeking a better life for themselves and their children in the United States. Metaphorically, it is symbolic of how choices are made at a crossroads in life, seemingly at random, that can have lasting impact. In chaos theory, this is known as the butterfly effect; González hence connects his mother’s choices with the motif of the butterfly seeking survival.

“As a reminder of my family’s failed enterprise, the outdoor cement stairs led the way to the unfinished second floor where the dogs with an irrepressible hatred for strangers watched over us. This house was my world. My world was Zacapu—the place of my father’s birth.”

This quote gives insight into why Rigoberto feels so drawn to returning home. As a child, despite the failures and imperfections of the house itself, it was a place that offered security and a sense of belonging—it was his “world.” This is a rare moment in the text in which González conveys a clear sense of home.

“And nearby was Angangueo, the famous monarch butterfly sanctuary, where the fiery invasion took place in early springs. We’d walk around wearing butterflies like appliqués on our clothing. And when they fluttered by the dozens so close to the ground, I’d run through a sea of them, disappearing behind the bursts of light coming through their wings. I have never come across such intensity of breath and beauty since, and when I see a monarch pictured in a magazine or television screen I’m swept back into the strange but comforting intimacy of their winking paradise.”

The butterfly is a motif that occurs several times throughout Butterfly Boy, even appearing in the name of the book itself. In this quote, Rigoberto explicates the importance of the monarch butterfly to his memories of childhood. It is one of the few happy memories Rigoberto recounts of his childhood.

“A person who experiences hunger never forgets that feeling. It is more than emptiness, more than an ache at the center of the stomach—it is a waking up and going to bed with shame, as if this stiffness of the jaw and hardening of the belly is part of some punishment. The flesh begins to feel transparent, and a strange echo resounds in the room when you admit to your weeping mother that you want real food, not tortilla with cheese and hot sauce, which she’s been feeding you the entire month.”

Rigoberto has a complicated relationship with food throughout his life, and he develops an eating disorder as a teenager. This quote demonstrates how this complicated relationship is partially grounded in the starvation he experienced as a child. He describes this in intimate, corporeal terms, including the tactile qualities of his stiff jaw and hard stomach, to portray the experience with verisimilitude.

“The loss of this house was the final gesture of good-bye and the clearest evidence that I would never return to live in Michoacán again. But most distressingly, I had lost the first home of my memory yet again.”

Throughout the text, Rigoberto expresses longing for home, but he can never return home again. This unrealized desire is “distressing” and rooted in the literal loss of his childhood house, as described here.

“It is not out of the ordinary to witness entire communities of farmworkers migrate back and forth between the two countries—an echo of the region’s famous monarch butterflies who do the same for survival, their spectacular flights across the continent retraced generations later through genetic memory.”

This quote is another example of how González uses the monarch butterfly as a metaphor throughout the text. He compares the experiences of migrant Chicano farmworkers, such as those in his family, to the monarch butterflies he observed as a child, highlighting that he and his family are also fighting for survival and exist between two worlds as a result.

“Our extended family was a necessity for socioeconomic livelihood, not a romanticized notion of togetherness and unity; by sticking together there was less of a chance of going hungry. But the compromise was loss of privacy.”

In this quote, Rigoberto emphasizes that his extended family did not stay together out of love or affection for one another. He draws attention to the harmful obscuring of the effects of poverty in the “romanticized notion[s]” of others. Their closeness was a result of difficult economic circumstances, which explains some of the volatile and at times violent dynamics within the family.

“I became a closet reader at first, taking my book with me to the back of the landlord’s house or into my parents’ room, where I would mouth the syllables softly, creating my own muted music. But as I distanced myself from outdoor games and rough play, I became more comfortable carrying this heavy book to the swings, where I drowned out the screaming and shouting of the other kids to concentrate on the page. The subject matter eluded me but not the rhythms pounding patterns deep in my throat.”

Rigoberto finds the privacy and solace he cannot find at home by losing himself in reading. Reading becomes a metaphor for his entire sense of identity, which he does not yet understand and hides away from others and yet is a source of liberation and joy.

“Every afternoon while my brother lost himself among the neighborhood streets on his dirt bike, I practiced dabbing rouge on my cheeks in slow and delicate circles just as I had seen my mother apply it to her own soft skin.”

This quote demonstrates how Rigoberto is different from his brother and other “typical” boys of his community. While his brother enjoys riding around outside on his dirt bike, Rigoberto prefers to stay home, experimenting with his mother’s makeup and clothes. Rigoberto’s experimentations with his mother’s things is both an expression of his queerness and a way to feel close to his mother when she is away in the hospital. He explores the notion of familial identity since he narrates copying what his mother does, preserving a matrilineal way of life in opposition to the expectations of patriarchy.

“When I stepped out of the church that afternoon, I was supposed to feel liberated, absolved, cleansed. But I felt none of those things as I was greeted by the blinding glare of the summer sun. Behind me the stone saints whispered among themselves the sacrilege that was my incomplete confession. I had not told the priest everything. How could I tell him that the holiness of prayer was powerless before my fury of desire for other males?—a sin, according to the Catholic Church.”

Rigoberto feels a lot of shame about his gay identity. In this quote, he connects the source of this shame to, in part, the Catholic prohibition of LGBTQ+ identities. He emphasizes that he feels so ashamed about his identity that he cannot bring himself to come out to the priest in confidential confession.

“I withdrew into books, which I collected on the bookshelf that went with me wherever I moved. It was the same bookshelf my parents had bought for me at the now-defunct Zody’s. Books provided me with an escape, like an inter-dimensional porthole I began to envision different environments and, more importantly, to imagine myself within them. They became my substitute homes.”

Rigoberto is constantly seeking a home despite his family’s migratory existence. When his childhood home in Zacapu is sold, he finds a “substitute home” in the books into which he withdraws. Again, he uses the language of science fiction, such as “inter-dimensional porthole,” which conveys the appeal of escape and connects it to his father’s desire to go to space.

“Sex with another man seemed so natural to me, the contact so necessary. Certainly the pleasure was rewarding, but so was the transgression—the only time I felt in control, even as I let the men do with me what they wanted, with whatever force.”

This quote gives insight into Rigoberto’s own feelings about his gay identity and how he feels about sex in general. He allows his lover to be violent toward him in bed, which is partially explained by his feeling that he is in control.

“There are people in the world, I imagine, who are born and die in the same town, maybe even in the same house, or bed. Creatures without migration: have they not lived a life because they have not moved? What of the migratory los González, moving from one place to another and marking every stopping place with angst? What kind of alternative is that? For once my father and I are thinking the same way, sharing a similar yearning for our starting points to have been different, for our final destination to be anything other than the tearful, resentful arrival it is likely to be.”

In this quote, Rigoberto expresses ambivalence about the distinctions between home and travel, especially within his family dynamics. While elsewhere he sees travel as a form of escape, he also acknowledges that for his family it is a source of “angst,” a term referring to a kind of existential sadness.

“With each visit to my grandparents’ house I hear a little more about my mother, and slowly I piece together this woman, trying to figure out if she would have approved of me as a gay man. In México the homosexual has many names: joto, puto, marica, maricón, margarita, and my favorite, mariposa, butterfly, an allusion to the feminine fluttering of eyelashes. To my mother, I was simply, mijo. My son.”

Rigoberto’s mother died before he had a complete understanding of his identity as a gay man, and in this quote he wonders if she would have accepted him. He ultimately decides she would have because, to her, he was not any of the many slurs for gay people mentioned in the quote but simply her son. This quote also features another use of the symbol of the butterfly, as a derogatory term for a gay man, but one that Rigoberto has decided to co-opt as a positive expression. It encapsulates several elements of his identity: gayness, migration, and survival.