The House of Broken Angels

“In his house, they were suddenly all awake and moving around like crashing doves in a cage. Raucous flutter and no progress. Time, time, time. Like bars across the door.” 

Big Angel listens to his family prepare for the funeral. The house springs to life around him. This passage includes a metaphor for life: raucous flutter and no progress. Big Angel compares his family’s hurried preparations for the day to an entire lifetime of preparation, all for a simple and mundane death.  

“No way of knowing how language re-created a family.”

This passage explores Urrea’s theme of Mexican identity as it pertains to language. Big Angel reflects on the younger generation’s aversion to Spanish and his own passion for the language. The family is remade as their relationship to language changes. 

“‘This second,’ his father liked to tell him, ‘just became the past. As soon as you noticed it, it was already gone. Too bad for you, Son. It’s lost forever.’” 

The theme of immortality and death is clear in this passage, as Big Angel recalls Don Segundo’s saying about the passage of time. He thinks about how each moment is slipping away and how each life is finite. He fears these lost moments. 

“‘There is a far shore. We are all like these little lakes. And when there’s a splash in the middle, ripples flow out from the center in perfect circles.’ ‘Dave,’ he’d replied, ‘what the hell are you talking about?’ ‘A life, pendejo —you. The ripple starts out strong and gets slighter till it hits the shore. Then it comes back. Almost invisible. But it’s there, changing things, and you’re in the middle wondering if you accomplished anything.’”

Dave, the Jesuit priest, speaks in this passage. He is reflecting on the way that one life can have an impact on an unknowable number of other lives. Though the accomplishments of a lifetime may be hard to measure, the impact of a life is enormous.

“Someone had come into his memories and erased whole blocks with an invisible bulldozer.” 

Little Angel returns to San Diego and struggles to connect with his hometown. In this passage, he thinks about how his memory has been erased alongside the buildings and streets that defined his life as a child. He associates these physical places with his memory, and losing them is like losing a part of himself. 

“Perhaps his biggest mistake was his believing that rage could help him be the perfect father.”

In this passage, Big Angel thinks about his early days of fatherhood. He treated Braulio and El Yndio with brutality, like his own father treated him. He realizes that his rage, which had brought him success in other areas, did not make him a good father. 

“Families came apart and regrouped, she thought. Like water. In this desert, families were the water.”

Perla reflects in this passage. She recalls the tumult that came from the early years of her family life in San Diego and her journey across the border. This chaos tore the family apart, and El Yndio left forever, but she has hope that the family will come together again.  

“Pain was how a man measured his worth, so he didn’t flinch during the probes, and he was asleep for the rest.” 

Big Angel describes his perspective on receiving a cancer diagnosis. His ideas about masculinity are startling here and make it clear why he was cruel to his sons. He was trying to teach them about the pain he believes will make them men. 

“Even in his wheelchair, Big Angel believed he could kick the ass of anything that came at him, and everybody else believed it too. They needed it to be true.” 

At the funeral, everyone sees how close Big Angel is to death. Despite this, Big Angel maintains his illusion of physical prowess. Because his ability to defend the family is vital for its safety, they believe he is capable of anything. 

“Every son, he told himself, will suffer after his mother has gone and he realizes how little he thanked her.”

Big Angel grieves Mamá América in this passage as he sits in on her funeral. He realizes the way that sons are ungrateful to their mothers: They do not realize the value of their mothers until after they are gone. 

“Every day, he found his gratitudes more ridiculous. But they were many, and they reproduced like desert wildflowers after rain.” 

Big Angel keeps a gratitude journal in his final days to give to his children when he is gone. He finds the practice ridiculous, but as he writes he finds that the love of life it inspires expands beyond the confines of the pages. 

“Damn, Braulio, he thought. The blood stayed on the sidewalk for days—turned brown. It was like some dead lake.” 

In this passage, Lalo recalls witnessing Braulio’s murder in the street and the way his death was cast aside nearly as soon as it happened. Lalo is haunted by this memory as well as by the violence he witnessed in Iraq. 

“Minnie didn’t have to worry about it. What a gringa. Homegirl was all borned up in National City, like a real American. She didn’t have to deal with these things. She could vote.” 

Lalo thinks about Minnie’s nationality and her privilege as an American. Unlike the rest of them, she was born in the country. Lalo is envious and calls her white because she doesn’t share his experience. He makes it clear that his immigration status causes him immense pain. 

“‘Must be nice, Carnal,’ he said. ‘To choose who you are.’” 

Big Angel speaks to Little Angel in his bed. Big Angel is envious of Little Angel’s ability, as a half-white man, to live between worlds. Though Little Angel sees this as a trap, Big Angel sees it as an opportunity: Little Angel can choose who he is.

“Big Angel stood, drifted to the middle of the room, and invited every memory to come to him and clothe him in beauty.” 

Big Angel ends the night of the funeral in the living room, allowing all his memories to flood him. The house is a symbol of this world of memory—it holds all his life in its folds. Memory figuratively clothes Big Angel here, covering his physical body. 

“Yes, he was hard on the boy. That was love. Look at this world.” 

In this passage, Don Segundo recalls flogging his son with a belt, literally beating his brooding, un-masculine, poetic tendencies out of him. Don Segundo sees his violence as a service to his child that will prepare him for the world. 

“‘If you could have produced more sons,’ he said, ‘I would not be forced to leave you.’ She had a completely still face, thinking: You vermin.” 

The blatant sexism of this passage is clear, as Don Segundo speaks to Mamá América about the reason for their divorce. He leaves her for a white woman. Don Segundo defines his wife by her ability to produce men. She is a baby-maker, nothing else. 

“He ran back and forth, but there was no magical portal on the Guatabampo that opened to some fresh new world where things were beautiful again.” 

Big Angel reflects on his childhood self here. He is trapped in an abusive situation aboard his uncle’s fishing boat. He yearns for another life, an escape, but nobody will rescue him. Instead, he must save himself. 

“Each side had something to prove, and none of them knew what it was.” 

As the family prepares for Big Angel’s birthday, the Mexican relatives mock Little Angel for his whiteness. The duality between Mexicanness and whiteness is strange and futile, as highlighted by this passage. Though each side feels passionately, none of them know why.

“How suddenly, on the verge of losing him, he realized he had no true idea who Big Angel was.” 

After seeing Ookie’s model of San Diego, Little Angel finally understands who his brother is. He begins to grieve more deeply because he finally has a sense of what he will lose when Big Angel dies—a man with a deep heart, who is full of surprises.

“I told this cabrón. I don’t have time to read these. All my life is just three words over and over: today I die.”

Big Angel speaks to Little Angel and Dave here. He talks about how despite Dave’s desire for him to read and reflect on his life, he is only certain of his own mortality. The presence of death is unwavering here, as Big Angel thinks about his coming demise. 

“When you died, you died in small doses. You had trouble speaking. You forgot who was beside you. You were suddenly furious and in a panic of outrage. You wished you could be saintly. You wished you weren’t so weak. You suddenly felt better and fooled yourself into believing that a miracle was about to happen.” 

This is Urrea’s most poetic reflection on mortality. He speaks in Big Angel’s voice, as a philosopher. In this moment, Big Angel thinks about the slow move toward death and how it disorients a person from the truth. Death forces us to wish for more from life as it looms. 

“How could he ever admit that he had exiled himself?” 

Yndio returns home and forces himself to consider the fact that he chose his own exile, after all these years. He was driven in part by violence, but mostly by the fear that if he ever did return, he would not be accepted.