The title of the book that brought Michele Serros to the attention of readers almost says it all. Chicana Falsa and Other Stories of Death, Identity and Oxnard says much about her approach to the art of fiction. Chicana falsa translates to “fake Chicana.” Serros was a leading figure in the second wave of Latina writers that revolutionized the publishing industry beginning in the early eighties. You can instantly tell Serros was not part of the first wave because she was not born in 1954. (That statement is not as hyperbolic as it sounds; 1954 was an incredible year for the birthing of babies who would go on to become world-changing Latinas.) The title is not a statement that Serros is not a Chicana, but is instead a reaction against the perception of expectations about what being a writer who also happens to be of Hispanic heritage means. Everything about the fiction of Serros treads along a sharp edge of ironic subversion of expectations even to the edge of questioning how much of it is actually pure fiction.
For instance, that initial book is about as difficult to categorize as trying to categorize what it means to be a Chicana. The subtitle indicates it is a book of stories which indicates very strongly that it is short story collection. And it is. Except that many of the stories are told through poems. The connotation of “stories” also carries another very strong suggestion: this is a work of pure fiction or, at least, mostly fiction. And yet, there is a story in the collection titled “The Day My Sister was on Television” which details the adventure of Yvonne Serros when she was asked to “come on down” and be a contestant on the game show The Price is Right. That the author’s sister is named Yvonne immediately calls into question whether this qualifies as a story of pure fiction or is a recollection appropriately fitted into a memoir. Truth or fiction and, if a combination, how much is fact and how much is invented? This question pervades throughout the collection and becomes an element defining the quality of the writing itself.
Against her will and certainly against her intention, Serros has cast as a genre writer in which her “genre” is Chicana lit. Of course, that is no more an actual genre than to suggest that William Faulkner and Edith Wharton should be categorized in the genre of Caucasian lit because they mostly write about white society. The fiction of Serros belongs to no restrictive genre: she doesn’t write mysteries or science fiction of about vampires or war. She writes about normal everyday people going about normal everyday lives who just so happen to reside mostly within Latin American culture. But not entirely and there’s the rub.
It is difficult to determine from much of her fiction whether she is, indeed, writing fiction and to what extent it is fiction because she writes so naturally. If a story refers to an aunt, it is very easy to believe she is referring to an actual blood relative because the story “feels” authentic, even if it might actually be entirely constructed from her imagination. She conveys a sense of reality with such felicity that the very idea that she is completely “faking” it seems ludicrous.
