The Boy Without a Flag

In this collection of short stories, The Boy Without a Flag (1992), Abraham Rodriguez Jr. captures the hardship of growing up poor in the South Bronx and what it is like to sacrifice one’s childhood in order to survive and to come to terms with the realities of life at a young age. Rodriguez offers readers a gripping account of New York Latino life and an honest account of the highs as well as the lows in a series of stories that are raw and unedited, straight from the streets onto the page.

Through his writing, Rodriguez states that he wants to expose the ugly underbelly of the American Dream. He writes about the kids that no one wants to think about, in a way that represents them as they are rather than how society wishes them to be. Rodriguez recreates the real brutality that exists in the lives of these kids, raised on the streets bearing witness to crack dealing and two-bit crime.

“The Boy Without a Flag,” the book’s titular story, is narrated by a precocious eleven-year-old boy who is a voracious reader and writes novels that other people consider unreadable, including a biography of Hitler. He has his own ideas about the concept of the American Dream, refusing to stand to salute the American flag during a school assembly. This act of defiance may be more for his father, a Puerto Rican poet who has planted his own ideas of rebellion in his young son’s malleable mind. He remembers when his father sat on the edge of his bed, yelling about Chile and what the CIA had done there. These stories nurtured an anti-American sentiment in the boy, causing him to act contrarily to his peers whom he feels just don’t know the reality of the situation. The boy watches the American flag being carried up to the stage alongside the smaller Puerto Rican flag and cannot find it in himself to stand up to salute it.

However, the boy finds that his plan has backfired when his father is summoned to the principal’s office to answer for his son’s behavior. His father tells the principal that he has no idea what has gotten into his son and that he has done his best to raise him right. This moment is an important lesson for the boy, as he realizes that his father has abandoned him, and he must come to terms with that and learn to stand by his own beliefs rather than seeking to impress his parents.

In “Birthday Boy,” thirteen-year-old Angel recounts the time he walked in on his mother and his uncle together. When his father finds out, he explodes and becomes drunk and violent, beating his wife and his son. Angel’s mother escapes, and soon after, Angel does the same, sleeping in crack houses for lack of other options. Angel soon finds himself caught up in a life of crime, drugs, and casual sex. He soon finds out that a girl he has been sleeping with is pregnant, and not long thereafter ends up spending the night in jail when a robbery he is involved in goes wrong. It is clear that there is no back-pedaling in this world, and that Angel is in it for the long haul.

In “No More War Games,” eleven-year-old Nilsa’s friend Cha-Cha tells her that she needs to grow up and start acting more mature. Cha-Cha’s idea of acting more mature involves wearing makeup and having sex. Although Nilsa still enjoys playing like a tomboy in the neighborhood, she notices that Cha-Cha has already started hanging out with the older boys. Nilsa feels pressure to draw a line in the sand, marking her entrance into adulthood. She feels that she should dress sexier and wear makeup, like Cha-Cha.

The theme of premature motherhood is pervasive throughout the book, notably in the story “The Lotto,” where the protagonist Dalia has recurring dreams about babies popping out of hats. She takes a pregnancy test with another young girl, Elba. Together the girls embark on a journey that will define the rest of their lives. After taking the test, Dalia is elated to find out that she is not pregnant, feeling like she won the lottery. Elba is not so lucky and must now prepare herself for the life of a young mother, altering her plans for her future or any life she might have imagined for herself. It is apparent that it is the girls who suffer more than the boys in this situation, as Dalia can’t even reach her boyfriend after having told him of her symptoms and her suspicions of the pregnancy. In this way, motherhood is seen as its own kind of prison, usurping any opportunities the girls might have had for their future.