First off.
There's not really too much of a reason to lump these two books together. Other than the fact that they are both collections of short stories written by authors living in Chicago, put out by Chicago presses, and I finished reading both on the same day. And the settings for both alternate between various locations in Latin America and the United States. Other than that, there's not much of a connection, and I'm writing about them together solely based on my timing of reading them. Let's start with On The Way.
I picked this book up at City Lit about a month ago. I'm always game to try anything Curbside Splendor puts out, even if the epigraph is a Radiohead lyric. But a blurb on the back from Bonnie Jo Campbell meant I would pick it up anyway.
Let's start with this: these stories are not uplifting. They're not always tragic, but they are often heartbreaking. It's not the fact that death always awaits us (it does sometimes), but that more often, bad things happen and the devastation permeates itself in its wake throughout a life; lucky are we who don't have to identify with many of these stories. The protagonists are generally women. They've been abused, they've been cheated on, they've been divorced, they've been abandoned in physical and existential ways. Vargas writes about women young and old, who've experienced a lot and who've experienced a lot of pain. Rarely do they find redemption. In an interview with Kati Heng, Vargas revealed her personal connection with some of these characters, how she identifies with them, and why they need their voices to be heard: "To appreciate the joy, you have to have the pain too. I think I am able to write bittersweet stories because I have lived through it."
