Night at the Fiestas

Valdez Quade’s stories betray a particular focus on her characters’ identity development, especially when it comes to negotiating the intersection of class and identity. Although class politics influence the plots of multiple stories amongst characters who range in age from young children to adults, the author repeatedly highlights the ways in which young people seek to alter their social positions within America’s deeply classed society. In “Mojave Rats,” for example, Monica associates middle- and upper-class identities with education, just as she associates working-class people with ignorance. Similarly, “Night at the Fiestas,” Frances hopes to elevate herself beyond her perceived working-class, provincial identity by managing the perceptions of others. Like Monica, she identifies education as a marker for the middle class. Andrea, too, wants to elevate her social standing as she approaches adulthood, and in “Jubilee,” it becomes apparent that social inequality has shaped her in ways that she does not yet fully understand.

In “Mojave Rats,” the author’s interest in class is evident in the story’s very title. “Rats” is a pejorative term that is meant to describe the other residents of the trailer park: people from whom Monica seeks to differentiate herself through the performance of erudition. Coming from humble beginnings herself, Monica has long sought to elevate her social standing through education and proximity to the educated. Both of her husbands were chosen in part because of their affluence and education, and although Monica is a true lover of literature, she also loves to be seen reading “important” books. For this reason, performativity becomes a key aspect of her story, and she is not the only character who mistakenly believes that performance can create reality. (Amadeo is also guilty of this misperception in the days leading up to his performance of Christ, for he hopes to be seen as a serious person merely because he is playing a serious role.) Monica is impressed when her first husband takes her to Canyon Road, an affluent district in Santa Fe that features many fine art galleries and fine dining establishments. However, she is chagrined when he still sees her through the lens of poverty and stereotypes her for having grown up in an under-resourced community. Because she was treated this way in her first marriage, Monica tries to shake the trappings of poverty in her second marriage, and her snobbery toward her neighbors at the trailer park therefore indicates a measure of self-hatred.

In “Night at the Fiestas,” Frances also desires to break free of the perception that she is a poor, small-town girl, and like Monica, she too carries around hefty works of canonical literature, hoping to be seen as educated and worldly. She looks forward to attending college in Albuquerque and shedding her small-town image, and this preoccupation with appearances fuels her embarrassment for her kind-hearted father, whom she sees as projecting a working-class vibe. Her self-hatred and desire for to achieve self-improvement by performing “middle class” behavior is also evident in her interactions with others. Although the man she meets on the bus is badly mannered and subjects her to harassment, Frances initially judges him because she thinks that he must be a farm hand. She wants to appear glamorous and to have an adventure befitting a stylish city girl, and this working-class man does not fit into her fantasy. The rudeness with which she treats him echoes Monica’s elitism in “Mojave Rats,” and Frances therefore emerges as another character who does not know how to make the leap from working-class to middle- or upper-class.

Finally, Andrea displays a measure of self-hatred because she perceives a working-class background to be a handicap. Resenting the awe that her parents show for their affluent employers, the Lowells, Andrea identifies the inequality that characterizes her father’s interactions with the Lowell family and bristles against it. She longs to be seen as something other than “just the daughter of one of their laborers” (178), and much of her anger and bad behavior is rooted in the unfairness of being the daughter of an impoverished worker on the property of a family who benefits from this labor without doing much work themselves. Andrea is a bright, accomplished girl whose academic success has secured her a place at Stanford, but she is more powerfully drawn to the cultural currency of such a degree than she is to the actual schooling itself. Like many other characters in this collection, she values performance more than reality. Thus, her mistreatment of Parker, although certainly undeserved, reflects the broader context of the two girls’ families and their relationships to each other. Andrea is aware that Parker has grown up largely ignorant of her own privilege, and there is a piece of her that cannot forgive Parker for this lack of awareness.