Pocho

Questions of identity frame, define, and drive Richard’s young life. Richard is continually confronted with the world’s expectations for him: his mother’s demands that he be a good Catholic, his father’s insistence on traditional Mexican masculinity, and assorted white people’s assumptions that he’s either a ne’er-do-well or an exception who needs to be a role model for other Chicanos. Richard rejects these claims on his selfhood wholesale: “I can be a part of everything, he thought, because I am the only one capable of controlling my destiny…Never—no, never—will I allow myself to become a part of a group—to become classified, to lose my individuality…” (152). However, he discovers that selfhood is more complicated than his early declarations of independence suggest.

Richard’s individualism is itself an inheritance. Though he expresses and understands his pride and masculinity differently than Juan Rubio, Richard gets his sense of the fundamental importance of these traits directly from his father. As he discovers when his father leaves the family, he is bound to his loved ones in ways he was only shielded from admitting when he was young and dependent. In fact, the only time he can maintain the illusion of independence is when he’s still a dependent.